I’ve written much about how b2b companies execute their marketing strategies; and am always surprised at how much these companies just don’t get it when it comes to investing in optimize their marketing and sales strategies. Well, despite the efforts and funds these companies have spent, you might just have to start over many of your marketing strategies.
Here’s some thoughts that come to mind:
1. If your firm is not adapting to new and digital marketing strategies, holding on to old school, your way of doing business needs to start over.
2. If you’re not focused and committed to understanding your audiences’s needs and pain points, and your messaging does not resonate with those audiences, you need to start over.
3. If you can’t easily explain what makes your firm unique and different from similar competitors, you need to start over.
4. If your sales and marketing people can’t get along or agree to a universal lead generation, throw out your old organizational process, and start over.
5. If you’re not investing in good market research to determine or reassuring brand positioning, audience attitudes and pain points, and creative messaging, start over.
6. If your website is written with your language, rather than the language of your buyers, you need to start over.
7. If your website can’t easily explain the benefits of your solutions to a potential buyer, yep, time to start over.
8. If you’re not measuring your website with Google Analytics, and really understanding goals, conversions, and how to make business decisions with the data, you may be losing valuable intelligence. Better start over.
9. If you’re testing social media tactics, but you haven’t put together a comprehensive social media plan with measurement goals, or you do not have a content strategy, your social media needs to start over.
10. If you haven’t done keyword research to determine what terms people use to find you, and you haven’t incorporated those terms in to your web copy, title tags, and meta descriptions, SEO needs to start over.
11. If your pay-per-click ads sound like all your competitors, and you’re not promoting a clear benefit with a strong call-to-action, better start over.
12. If your firm is spending too much top with lead generation, and no effort to nurture unready leads so that eventually they will be ready, those “bad” leads will buy from competitors. Think about including a lead nurturing program to support sales and increase ROI, or take your lead management process, and start over.
13. If you blog, and you don’t do it consistently, you don’t utilize relevant keywords, and you don’t follow an editorial calendar that includes a problem-solving approach, guess what, start over.
14. If you think everything is social media, and you don’t follow a sound multi media approach that creates demand for your products and services, start over.
15. Finally, if you wish to think of some more, please let me know, and if you wish to reread this, go back to number one, and start over.
Think about my words; that’s all I ask.
