You know what they say: You have to spend money to make money. But finding the right marketing tactics to invest in can be tricky, and the consequences have a huge impact on an organization’s growth trajectory - either positively or negatively.
Here are 2 common ways businesses often lose money on their marketing investments. Avoid them like the plague!
1. Ad Hoc Marketing Activities
Business leaders often have a million “great” ideas. They flow fast and furious, and it’s easy to get caught up in all the hype. But if you rush forward without understanding how to get the best results from your efforts, you’ll lose money.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you decide to start blogging. You create 1 or 2 articles a month, but you don’t follow the blogging best practices. Your titles aren’t the most compelling, you don’t use graphics, you have no keywords, and you have no calls-to-actions for lead generation. On top of that, you haven’t put together a process for promoting your articles. But, you figure you’re doing good because at least you’re doing something.
In this situation, it’s likely that no one will find or read your articles, so you might as well not have written them at all. You just wasted your valuable time. Whether you’re doing-it-yourself or working with an expert, it’s critical to follow marketing best practices to increase the likelihood you’ll get a positive return on investment.
2. Marketing Without a Strategy
A lot of organizations take action without having a good plan. Here’s a common example: A company decides to do a website redesign, but rather than take the time to do a full audit, evaluation, and analysis to find out the friction points, they jump right into it. The focus is too much on design and not on creating the type of user experience that generates leads. They risked their hard earned money on an ill-conceived website and may be left wondering at the end why they still aren’t getting more customers.
Strategy will make – or break – the success of a project.
Solution: Do Your Research
Do your research before you invest in any new marketing activities. If you’re working with an experienced professional, you don’t have to be an expert yourself, but make sure you have at least a rudimentary understanding of what it takes to be successful. If you are doing-it-yourself, you should learn as much as you can about doing it right.
Either way, the most important thing to do is set marketing goals and measure progress so you can stay focused on activities that get results and avoid wasting money on things that don’t work.
Comments