Have you ever wondered why your marketing is not attracting the quantity of customers you need? “Where are the propspects?” you ask. As a marketer, this is a tremendous fear that many of us have when we realize our pipeline isn’t full of quality prospects and doesn’t appear to be attracting more. When you finally think it with that little voice in your head, you know it’s time to figure out the problem immediately, or it may be too late.
There are many symptoms within a company’s marketing structure that can cause trepidation. Some are easily remedied and others may require an entire overhaul of your marketing strategy from concept to deployment. However, before you start sweating the big stuff, take a look at some of the symptoms that may be the cause of your marketing jitters. If you can identify and narrow down the pain points, your plan and action steps for fixing whatever is causing your problems will be easier. Below are a few symptoms that may be the cause of your marketing to not perform like you need it to.
• You are embarrassed to give our your website because you know it’s bad
• If you’re customers are inclined to purchase online, and your mobile strategy hasn’t been thought about yet
• Your website traffic is down and has been trending down for months
• Knowledge of the customer is uncertain and is changing
• Your sales team recognizes and documented that quality leads are not coming in any longer
• The company does not appear anywhere near page one of search results
• Your social media page looks like a ghost town, there are limited posts, not much traffic and followers are dwindling
• Your marketing strategy is fragmented and not focused on using relevant content reaching targeted personas
• The marketing and customer path is unclear or ends at the first touch point
• You hear in the market that your company is the best kept secret
• You’re not using social media as a customer feedback channel
• Your competitors are healthy and their marketing looks “good” to you and your prospective customers
• You are not exactly sure how your competitors compare to your own company
• You are feeling the pressure to continually increase paid media advertising to increase leads
• Your marketing team is not creating frequent content designed to position your company as the leader or a valuable option
• You aren’t sure why content marketing really works
• Your company digital footprint is decreasing not increasing
• Your marketing plan has not been reviewed or tweaked in years
• The customers in the database are opting out during email campaigns at higher levels than usual
• Your marketing team is performing manual tasks that should be automated
These are just a few of the symptoms that marketers can experience. All of them elicit fear and anxiety. Why? Because, customers aren’t knocking on your door as much as they used to. As the marketing department, if you think that you’ve tried everything you can think of and you’re not sure if what you are currently doing is working, it’s definitely time to stop, gather some market intelligence and re-load your marketing strategy. My suggestion is to start with clearly defining your target persona(s) and what you are offering that creates value. That will help you define what content and channels to invest in for your brand.
Original Huffington Post Original Article
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