5 reasons why your marketing isn’t working

• Amanda Beylkin
• Tuesday 28 August 2018

Are you feeling disappointed with your business’ marketing results? Perhaps growth isn’t happening as quickly as you expected or sales are decreasing. Before you do anything drastic, it’s important to find out why your marketing isn’t working. Start by considering 5 of the most common reasons.

Reason 1: You’ve skipped marketing strategy & planning

It might feel like your business is saving time & being more productive by skipping strategy & planning sessions. Beware: doing this can cost you dearly.

Without planning, you risk wasting time, money & effort on:

- Marketing activities that don’t reach the right audience & fail to help you achieve business goals.

- Complex, confusing or mismatched branding, design & content. The messages communicated don’t tell people who you are, what you do, why you’re better than your competitors & how people can benefit from using your products/services.

With no clarity or direction & a whole load of different tactics to choose from, your marketing activities & budget can spiral out of control - without any real return.

Reason 2: You’re trying too hard to do everything

New marketing ideas & growth hacks are shared daily. It can be easy for you or your marketer to get caught up in trends & stories of overnight successes. Don’t let excitement guide marketing decisions. Do the following:

- Review the new idea critically. If it worked for a tech brand, will it really help you sell face-to-face accounting services?

- Understand what else needs to be done to roll out your new activity. For example, a new social media network might require specific, time-consuming content.

- Consider how introducing something new will impact your workload.

- Work out how spending less time on existing activities could affect marketing performance.

If new activities are constantly being added to your marketing plan, to-do lists will grow, but available time won’t. Marketing takes time. Even growth hacks don’t happen overnight – they require preparation, planning & review. When your business commits to too many marketing activities, it can spread itself too thinly to see results.

Reason 3: You’re still doing what worked in 2015

Keeping an eye on what’s happening around your business is incredibly important. If

competitors, industry changes & customers aren’t being researched regularly, it will be much harder to create relevant messages & deliver marketing that drives action. Your marketing plan isn’t a document that you create once & forget – it needs to be reviewed & updated at least once a year. Doing so successfully requires research & performance analysis (which I’ll introduce in reason 4). Remember: times change. Just because something worked in 2015, doesn’t mean that it will work now.

Reason 4: You’re not measuring marketing performance or collecting feedback

If you’re investing time & money in marketing, you need to be measuring performance & asking for customer feedback. Making decisions based on ‘gut feel’ or vanity metrics (i.e. number of followers) won’t help your business grow. Performance data & customer feedback, combined with the research mentioned in reason 3, can help you or your marketer:

- Understand what’s working & what’s not.

- Allocate time & budget to the right activities.

- Better understand what your target audience wants, likes & needs.

- Make changes that generate marketing & business growth.

Reason 5: You don’t ask for help until you’re in trouble

It’s all too easy to panic & call in the marketing consultants, business advisors, accountants & coaches after things have gone horribly wrong. However, what’s much more effective is asking for tips & assistance while things are still going well. This often costs less money & takes less time. It allows you to future-proof your marketing - & your business - while taking the steps required to achieve your goals.

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