Marketing

Sarah Worsham / Aug 14, 2014

4 Ways Your Marketing Fails

Marketing is easy, right? Well, it doesn’t really have to be difficult, but it does require some forethought and planning. More importantly, it means understanding the entire point of marketing: explaining to potential customers what your product can do for them. Unfortunately, a lot of marketing out there fails at even that…

1. Customers Can’t Tell What You Do

Sometimes people think they need to use big phrases and keywords in their marketing and they forget to speak to who is important: people. If someone visits your website, or walks past your store, or sees your ad or your Facebook page, they should immediately be able to tell what it is you do. The best marketing sums this up in a short phrase that can often be used as a tagline.

2. Customers Can’t Understand How You can Help

Marketing too often is caught up in features. Our product does X, Y & Z. That’s great. How does the fact that it does X help me? While it may be clear to you that a pressure washer that has a 1200 PSI is a good buy, how does a potential customer know why that’s a good (or not so good) number. What applications is 1200 PSI pressure washer good for? When should they consider more, when should they consider less? If you think in terms of benefits to the customer or how you can solve specific problems, your marketing will be much more effective.

3. Customers Can’t Tell You Apart From Your Competitors

MBA-types like to talk a lot about competitive advantage — what sets you apart from your competitors. While this is a lofty, intellectual concept, it really is important. Not only from a business strategy, but also in marketing. To boil it down: why should someone choose you over your competitors? This should be obvious from all of your marketing efforts.

4. Customers Don’t Look to You to Solve Problems

Customers buy things because they have a need. Sometimes that need is just for those trendy new shoes, but often times they’re looking for something to solve a specific problem. This is especially true of services and business-to-business products. Do you know what types of problems can be solved for your product or service? Do you specifically address those problems and how you can help in your marketing? There is great content ideas here for blogging and social media….

What other ways does marketing fail?

Sarah Worsham / May 6, 2014

Tips for Effective Lead Generation

While we may have marketing to increase awareness or stay top-of-mind, the gold at the end of the rainbow is generating quality leads. Content marketing and communicating with customers via social channels are great ways to connect, but how do you leverage your efforts to generate leads? Marketo, which provides a marketing automation platform, recently asked several marketers (including me), about lead generation best practices:

There are a lot of philosophies and opinions on lead generation. To help you cut through the noise, we spoke to four leading marketing experts and got some of their best insights. Here’s what they had to say about the dos and don’ts of effective lead generation. — Dos and Don’ts of Effective Lead Generation

Some of my thoughts:

Leveraging your network to drive lead generation can be a very tempting way to try to get referrals. While it certainly makes sense to use this resource, it’s vital to respect your network.

Spamming with marketing and sales offers is the surest way to lose valuable human connections, and increase the deafness to your message when you really need it. Stick to an 80/20 rule for any marketing you do online, but especially to your networks. Eighty percent of your content should be of value to the audience, and only 20% (or less!) should be direct marketing or advertising.

Providing regular, valuable content to your network will increase their awareness of your services and improve your reputation as an expert.

Sarah Worsham / Mar 27, 2014

Just Like Anything, Internet Marketing Takes Patience

Zen Beach Stones at Home (Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography)

In this instant-on world, where we can get access to just about any constant with a google search or an ipad app, we sometimes forget that not everything is instant. Good internet marketing is about providing the right message to the right people at the right time. Researching and figuring out what tactics and channels to use to find the right people takes time, and sometimes experimentation. Even with tactics in place, it takes time to build reputation, audience, and reach, all which may be in vain if the timing isn’t right. While internet marketing can provide results faster than many other channels, it still requires patience in execution.

Research Required

One of the benefits of internet marketing is the access to information that previously was either difficult or costly to attain. This valuable information can provide insights into where your audience is online, what they care about, and what they need. Taking time to do research will help you tailor your messaging, tactics and even products to align more closely with what your potential customers want and need.

Experiment & Collect Data

Because the Internet moves so quickly, there is an opportunity to constantly experiment and collect data. Most marketing is a best guess based on research and previous experience. Internet marketing tactics allow marketers to test their theories relatively quickly and cheaply and collect data to improve results.

Analyze & Improve

The downside of so much information and data is that you can easily become overwhelmed with what to focus on. Analyze the data that provides direct information about how well your marketing is working — these should be your primary and secondary key performance indicators. Ask the ‘so what?’ question about each metric to move from a number to a recommendation on what to improve.

Patience Takes Dedication

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to give up on marketing efforts before they have a chance to provide results. By being dedicated to patience and controlling expectations, internet marketing tactics can have the opportunity to show what they can do. Constant measuring and analysis along the way will help provide data that tactics are moving in the right direction.