Recently, I had some comments from people on LinkedIn. They voiced their opinion (and I am glad they did). They didn’t appreciate the tone of the last article called, “Are You A Stupid Marketer?” The readers thought it was too condescending. Although that wasn’t the intent, with that being said, I made every effort to remove whatever wording that may have initiated that thought.
We’ve all made mistakes in our career. In fact, that is where we learn the most and have the information and ability to correct ourselves.
The worst part about our mistakes is that they affect our customers, and of course the sales pipeline is too – ugh. Hopefully, once we’ve learned from our errors, we pass on what we learned to others and we don’t show our ignorance again – I did say hopefully 🙂
Here are a few mistakes that are easy to forget in the midst of all the marketing strategy and implementation. Get this right and you’ll be one step closer to closing the gap between customer touch point and purchase.
- Persona: This is your target audience or customer that means the most to your company. Get to know their online and offline behaviors and describe them in detail for your entire marketing team to fully understand. Be very specific.
- Key Messages: Don’t forget to write content that has a key message. This should be crafted to meet the needs of your persona, and also help to clarify exactly what you want the customer to understand when they come in contact with your marketing. Ask yourself this question before you write your content, “What is the one thing I want my customer to understand when they see my marketing or advertising?” – That is your key message.
- Customer Path: Your customer will follow a path from first touch point with the brand to the first meaningful conversation with the sales team. Determine what that path is? What are the potential obstacles? And what will make the anticipated path a success?
- Creating a CTA: Customers don’t want to think. They really subliminally want you to guide them while they are assimilating the brand information. In order to do that, create an easy to read Call-To-Action (CTA) that elicits an action from your customer. You want them to click, call, email, or do something that connects them to the company. This hopefully will lead to a positive conversion or purchase.
- Measuring Efficacy: We’ve all probably heard our boss say, “If you can’t measure it, why do it?” There is definitely some truth to that. It’s also not as easy as one might think to measure every aspect of your marketing. There are some parts of marketing campaigns that are designed to build awareness, and others designed to educate and convert to name a few. Measurement takes time and resources. Try to find something to measure with each initiative. If you’re using marketing automation tools, you’re all set, as they can provide valuable measurement tools. If you’re marketing doesn’t have those tools, you can still measure, it will just take some extra thought, planning and time.
Utopian Dream
In today’s digital world, a marketer is forced to learn with a fire hose of information attached to their brain. There is more to learn than anyone can possibly absorb. Marketing is not just about creative content development any more. It’s about the marriage of up-front planning and strategy, understanding the customer, developing a persona, figuring out a customer path, creating an effective CTA and conversion. And these are just a few. Marketing is also about content production being applied to the customer in the sales funnel – all while tracking that person all the way through to conversion and purchase. I know that all sounds like a utopian dream… but we have to at least try right?
If you’re a small business owner, mistakes can be far more painful than if you work for a large Fortune 100 firm. I say that because it’s usually your hard earned money you are spending on marketing, not the marketing department’s budget. Somehow, when it comes directly out of your wallet, it always hurts more when mistakes happen. Here’s a great article on the Huffington Post titled The 6 Most Common Online Marketing Mistakes Small Business Owners Make.
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