Marketing Strategy: How Does the Implementation Fail?

Spread the love

Why is it that, despite a good marketing strategy, implementation is not getting off to a good start? Where to look?

Contents

Losing sight of the goal – pain of transformation
Impatience – lack of persistence
Monitoring is missing
Too little activity – budget issue
Spirit is lost
Unsuitable service providers
Conclusion
My advice

Losing sight of the goal – pain of transformation

Every new marketing strategy comes up against resistance. It is perfectly normal. New strategies even have to be almost painful because a growth phase should be initiated. This is not easy and arouses resistance.

If the implementation of the marketing strategy is too easy and without any loss of friction, this is actually more of a sign that the thinking and planning were too small. That was dared too little.

It helps to clearly see the main goals every day. A timeline with milestones is even better. Simply write on the flipchart or print it out in a large format. This helps to keep an eye on the intention.

If you know where and why you want to go, you don’t lose sight of the destination so quickly.

Impatience – lack of persistence

No matter what you push, everything takes time until it can grow, grow, and develop. Even the best marketing strategy takes time.

If I sow lettuce today, I can’t harvest it next week. And to stay in the picture: If I impatiently dig my bed next week and sow zucchini instead of lettuce, the consequence is not faster, but slower or not at all.

Content marketing is highly effective, but it takes time. It looks exactly the same as advertisements, events, or email marketing. It just takes time to get visibility in the market. Often enough, we have to do with repositioning, new service packages, and other target group segments in the strategy process.

So the surest way to make even the best strategy fail is to try something new every few weeks.

Readjustment is important but should be based on well-founded data.

Monitoring is missing

And where we are with data and readjustment, we are already with controlling. It always sounds so dry, but it doesn’t have to be pea-counting. This means reviewing what has been achieved. If I just do it and just run away, the danger is great that I won’t get where I want to go. In addition to the clarity about the goal, it is also necessary to check the route.

It does not always have to be a large-scale investigation supported by market research; it is usually sufficient to keep an eye on the essential change.

Traffic
Traffic sources
Length of stay
Lead sources

Besides, there are now many good tools that help with Google Analytics in evaluating the customer journey and marketing monitoring.

The quality of the key figures is of crucial importance here. Too often, the focus here is purely on quantity, rather than on qualitative significance. So the sheer number of leads or the size of the audience doesn’t say enough. Similar to customer management, well-considered evaluation of the data is also required here. 2,300 customers in my database are of no use if only 2 of them are active buyers.

The situation is similar to email marketing. A large list is good, but useless if the opening rate is only 8%.

Incidentally, monitoring has a similar effect on the addiction to likes. With every positive change, the reward center in the brain is addressed. You can see that it works and you work harder to make it work even better.

Success becomes visible through monitoring, even with the first small steps in the right direction that have no monetary impact.

Too little activity – budget issue

It takes not only time but also a lot to make a wave.

Our neighbor is an enthusiastic, almost obsessed gardener. I always had the impression that no matter what he grows, he will do everything. Until I realized that he failed as often as I did. It only goes under in the crowd.

If one of three advertising campaigns fail, it is dramatic. If it is one in 10 it does not matter. With all caution, it takes a certain amount of marketing to do effective marketing.

Spirit is lost

What I also see more often in small and medium-sized companies is that the spirit is lost. People buy from people. If the operative service providers, such as agencies, web designers, etc. have not grasped the spirit of the company, the spirit of the products and services, the communication remains inanimate, soulless, and thereby loses massive strength and effectiveness.

Dare as an entrepreneur to become visible and tangible as a person. Do not hide behind your agency’s well-established advertising blah.

Unsuitable service providers

With external operational service providers, in particular, it takes time to know whether you really have the right ones at hand. Regardless of whether you hire several individual service providers, virtual assistants, or an agency.

For cooperation to work, there should be clarity about the tasks and responsibilities. Of course, sympathy is also important, as is understanding about the business it is about.

About the joy of having found someone who takes a job off, you should see what the background and qualifications look like. With virtual assistants, in particular, it sometimes looks a bit thin. Creating your website or maintaining a few social media profiles does not make you a professional.

In a current client project, to my great amazement, the target audience for the Facebook Ads grew with every specific characteristic. A sure sign that you are not dealing with professionals.