{"id":5632,"date":"2013-08-15T09:02:23","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T13:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=5632"},"modified":"2013-08-15T09:02:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T13:02:23","slug":"three-reasons-why-most-marketing-programs-dont-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2013\/08\/three-reasons-why-most-marketing-programs-dont-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Reasons Why Most Marketing Programs Don\u2019t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"procrastination-header\"<\/a>So here you are in the peak of the summer season. You\u2019ve managed to get through a heat wave, crab grass, a vacation if you\u2019re lucky, and the extra work you inherited as a result of other people\u2019s vacations. Your friends around the barbeque ask you how business has been and with perhaps just a little flinch, you tell them it\u2019s been great. Has it though? With all the time slipping by, has your sales team been rolling in an abundance of warm leads and prospects to call? Has that marketing program you said you would do after last year\u2019s holiday season really gotten underway with any momentum? It\u2019s OK to be honest on this one. After all, nobody is around to call on you from the front of the lecture hall.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re hanging your head a little low on this point, you\u2019re not alone. Many business owners are in the same boat where marketing is concerned, and there are many reasons for this that actually have very little to do with summer slumps. In fact the vast majority of small to medium-size businesses we speak to have some nominal form of marketing going on at one level or another. The question is whether or not these programs get half the attention and maintenance one would give to his swimming pool around this time of the year. And that brings us to the three main reasons why most marketing programs don\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Procrastination \u2013<\/strong> One of the most common barriers to effective marketing has nothing to do with creativity, print space or budgets. Many owners and managers have a tendency to put marketing off because they are too busy coping with other functions. This can happen in smaller organizations that don\u2019t have anyone wearing the marketing \u201chat,\u201d or when the core management team is doing everything it can to prospect and handle service issues. It also happens frequently enough among those people who mistakenly believe that marketing is best done when \u201cthings slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first scenario is understandable \u2013 not ideal, but understandable. The second one is absurd and based on no workable models or standards. Yes, it can be pure chaos from time to time and the idea of assembling a proper marketing strategy and plan during a peak order period can appear to be rather daunting. Yet the truth is, marketing (at any level) is by definition the very thing that moves products into the hands of your target audience. The longer you put it off, the longer it will take to build revenue from product sales. This is a simple, natural law that is often omitted from the battle plans of even the most energetic managers in the business.<\/p>\n

Spits and Spurts \u2013<\/strong> For every industry I\u2019ve ever been involved in, there is this idea that you can gauge the success of a marketing program by trying one or two tactics. This is like learning how to swim by dipping your toe into the water, once. How could anyone think they will raise awareness for their business its products and services and influence a target audience into believing they should even consider going to that business for its widgets if they do not communicate regularly over time? Many business owners have flat-out told me they don\u2019t think they should fund a direct mail program because \u201cwe tried it once and the phones didn\u2019t ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now I don\u2019t want to get into an argument over the rationale for direct mail, but here is a tactic that ranks among the most affordable marketing actions available to most businesses, particularly those that operate on a regional basis. It also provides a great deal of control meaning we control what the message is, who sees the message and when they see it.\u00a0 If anyone puts up a barrier and tells you direct mail didn\u2019t work or an ad failed to produce any results, the first question you need to ask is not about the creative execution, but rather on how often the promotion was done. Hit or miss, starts and stops and anything else like it prevent your target audience from even becoming aware of your business or products. And without that fundamental awareness, you become very easy to overlook the next time that prospect is ready to inquire.<\/p>\n

Surveys \u2013<\/strong> This is an easy area to get critical on, particularly since it is dismissed all too easily by the best minds in marketing including veteran ad agency executives themselves. Here\u2019s what happens; the promotional concept is drawn up by your team. It gets scrutinized up and down for its aesthetics, cleverness and prose and then launched. Nobody carved out any time to survey the target audience to determine what they would most likely find important or appealing. A beauty shot of a piece of equipment set against the backdrop of the Grand Canyon looks great in the hands of a professional designer. However, if the prospect in Baltimore doesn\u2019t feel motivated to respond, the piece is a flop; unless the headline hits a nerve he\u2019s been trying to handle with an incumbent supplier (i.e. \u201cDoes your current service provider leave you in the middle of nowhere?\u201d).<\/p>\n

A survey would reveal ahead of time if that concept is a \u201cbutton\u201d which will get prospect response, and be very useful in gaining traction from your marketing whether you are pursuing prospects among several industries and professions or you\u2019re after a niche market. Anything else is simply guesswork that can leave you digging endlessly into a mountainside looking for gold while being just two feet from a large vein.<\/p>\n

These are just three of the most fundamental aspects of marketing \u2014 and also reveal the most common marketing mistakes. In later posts I\u2019ll cover some of the finer points of marketing communications that are based on proven technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here you are in the peak of the summer season. You\u2019ve managed to get through a heat wave, crab grass, a vacation if you\u2019re lucky, and the extra work you inherited as a result of other people\u2019s vacations. Your friends around the barbeque ask you how business has been and with perhaps just a little flinch, you tell them it\u2019s been great. Has it though? With all the time slipping by, has your sales team been rolling in an abundance of warm leads and prospects to call? Has that marketing program you said you would do after last year\u2019s holiday season really gotten underway with any momentum? It\u2019s OK to be honest on this one. After all, nobody is around to call on you from the front of the lecture hall. If you\u2019re hanging your head a little low on this point, you\u2019re not alone. Many business owners are in the same boat where marketing is concerned, and there are many reasons for this that actually have very little to do with summer slumps. In fact the vast majority of small to medium-size businesses we speak to have some nominal form of marketing going on at one level or another. The question is whether or not these programs get half the attention and maintenance one would give to his swimming pool around this time of the year. And that brings us to the three main reasons why most marketing programs don\u2019t work. Procrastination \u2013 One of the most common barriers to effective marketing has nothing to do with creativity, print space or budgets. Many owners and managers have a tendency to put marketing off because they are too busy coping with other functions. This can happen in smaller organizations that don\u2019t have anyone wearing the marketing \u201chat,\u201d or when the core management team is doing everything it can to prospect and handle service issues. It also happens frequently enough among those people who mistakenly believe that marketing is best done when \u201cthings slow down.\u201d The first scenario is understandable \u2013 not ideal, but understandable. The second one is absurd and based on no workable models or standards. Yes, it can be pure chaos from time to time and the idea of assembling a proper marketing strategy and plan during a peak order period can appear to be rather daunting. Yet the truth is, marketing (at any level) is by definition the very thing that moves products into the hands of your target audience. The longer you put it off, the longer it will take to build revenue from product sales. This is a simple, natural law that is often omitted from the battle plans of even the most energetic managers in the business. Spits and Spurts \u2013 For every industry I\u2019ve ever been involved in, there is this idea that you can gauge the success of a marketing program by trying one or two tactics. This is like learning how to swim by dipping your toe into the water, once. How could anyone think they will raise awareness for their business its products and services and influence a target audience into believing they should even consider going to that business for its widgets if they do not communicate regularly over time? Many business owners have flat-out told me they don\u2019t think they should fund a direct mail program because \u201cwe tried it once and the phones didn\u2019t ring.\u201d Now I don\u2019t want to get into an argument over the rationale for direct mail, but here is a tactic that ranks among the most affordable marketing actions available to most businesses, particularly those that operate on a regional basis. It also provides a great deal of control meaning we control what the message is, who sees the message and when they see it.\u00a0 If anyone puts up a barrier and tells you direct mail didn\u2019t work or an ad failed to produce any results, the first question you need to ask is not about the creative execution, but rather on how often the promotion was done. Hit or miss, starts and stops and anything else like it prevent your target audience from even becoming aware of your business or products. And without that fundamental awareness, you become very easy to overlook the next time that prospect is ready to inquire. Surveys \u2013 This is an easy area to get critical on, particularly since it is dismissed all too easily by the best minds in marketing including veteran ad agency executives themselves. Here\u2019s what happens; the promotional concept is drawn up by your team. It gets scrutinized up and down for its aesthetics, cleverness and prose and then launched. Nobody carved out any time to survey the target audience to determine what they would most likely find important or appealing. A beauty shot of a piece of equipment set against the backdrop of the Grand Canyon looks great in the hands of a professional designer. However, if the prospect in Baltimore doesn\u2019t feel motivated to respond, the piece is a flop; unless the headline hits a nerve he\u2019s been trying to handle with an incumbent supplier (i.e. \u201cDoes your current service provider leave you in the middle of nowhere?\u201d). A survey would reveal ahead of time if that concept is a \u201cbutton\u201d which will get prospect response, and be very useful in gaining traction from your marketing whether you are pursuing prospects among several industries and professions or you\u2019re after a niche market. Anything else is simply guesswork that can leave you digging endlessly into a mountainside looking for gold while being just two feet from a large vein. These are just three of the most fundamental aspects of marketing \u2014 and also reveal the most common marketing mistakes. In later posts I\u2019ll cover some of the finer points of marketing communications that are based on proven technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[724,723],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5632"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5632"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5643,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5632\/revisions\/5643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}