Every business relies on its Sales and marketing to drive growth. Marketing produces a steady and predictable flow of qualified leads for sales to convert them. The business growth stops when there is no flow of leads and it’s scary for any business owner/CEO. I’ve seen and been there before, too. We will have to figure out how to get the leads flowing again to avoid the risks of the business. If you find yourself in this situation, here are some common culprits and suggestive fixes:
1. You don’t have a plan
“Failing to plan is planning to fail”. he #1 reason for the marketing function to fail is “You Don’t have a plan”. Here are some of the signs that you don’t have a plan
Nothing is documented
Plans are borrowed
Marketing activities keep changing, and it’s frustrating
Everything is a last-minute
The result – “BAD MARKETING”
Consider developing your own plan that is data and insights driven. Define the marketing strategy and goals in alignment with the business and sales goals. Plan out for a year, prioritize your goals, and review each quarter based on the changing market scenarios. Follow the step-by-step process for creating a marketing strategy and plan.
2. Your brand has no visibility or isn't attractive.
Customers and clients prefer to work with businesses that they know and trust. It's important that you build a brand that positions you as an expert who can guide them to buy. If your buyers don't trust you of helping them with the challenges, they're not going to hire you.
Consider building social proofs, blog entries, publish your POV’s based on experience or based on original research, provide value calculators, video content etc., to strengthen your brand and build trust with your audience. The goal should be to focus on providing practical information that they can use, provide insights into the topics that matter most to the audience, and enable the buyers to make a purchase decision.
3. Your message is confusing.
We are too busy in our day to day operations and forget how to effectively communicate with prospects who don't have that same level of understanding.
I worked closely with IT services companies and saw this problem all the time. A potential client had simple questions, and the consultants answered those questions with complex technical jargon that confused and intimidated their prospective clients. Keep your messaging simple. How can you make life better for your customers with your product or service?
4. You're reaching out the wrong audience.
Many times, the problem isn't with your service/product or even your marketing campaigns. It is that you're pitching your business to the wrong audience - one that doesn't need your business, can't afford your products or services or doesn't understand your offerings enough to consider you or buy from you.
“Targeting everyone is targeting no one.”
Are you communicating with people who have the desire and the ability to pay for your services? Consider understanding the target audience’s issues, concerns, or buying process by service/product, find your niche, segment them, pick a place to start, and accelerate services to your best clients where you provide the most value.
Another major reason for failure, is you have bad data or inaccessible information, data is incomplete, missing that is spread across multiple silos. Consider assigning one person to simplify the systems, update the data periodically, and prepare the data to maximize results.
5. You’re not implementing the plan correctly, not giving enough time
People have no time for marketing, you can difficulty completing all the tasks (Deadlines are missed), the budget requires you to cut corners, too busy doing with no time to analyze what is being done, Good intentions are not realized, and hence many times the results are disappointing.
Marketing is a team sport, it’s a marathon and not a sprint. Consider providing top-level support, commitment, stakeholder involvement with the marketing team so that they can focus on strategies and techniques that produce the best return and expect some positive results, concentrate on quality over quantity, benchmark your efforts against the relatively high growth firms.
6. You’re expecting too much too soon
Today’s B2B reality is a. there are fewer near-term deals as tech buyers are putting a higher bar on what is worth pursuing b. Longer sales cycles as there is far more scrutiny on all spending and c. increased competition – few deals chasing by the same number of sales reps.
Getting noticed by the B2B buyers in the crowded marketplace is difficult (more so with the companies with little or no brand recognition), and more importantly the biggest challenge for the customers today is to buy. It’s all about reaching them timely and enabling them with the buying decision.
A lot of the buyers who are visiting your website or engaging on social channels are doing their online research to make a purchase decision but aren’t ready yet. They will be looking to you to help them buy – You can make the process easy by providing the educational resources/enabling tools/examples of how others in the same industry addressed the challenges. Be consistent and context sensitive, become the first choice when they are ready to purchase.
7. You’re giving up too quickly.
Effective marketing requires repetition, consistency without losing the context. It takes repeated touchpoints and engagements with the prospects in order to drive action and not touch base once. It takes a minimum of 10-12 touch points with the audience to go get the brand registered, get to stage where they consider us. You need to reach your target market repeatedly and need to adopt a multi-channel outreach.
Your business is vulnerable if your marketing fails to perform. Take time to audit your current marketing strategy, plan, and systems to identify and pinpoint the problems and find a solution. So, dive in with a quick marketing audit.