Change your marketing and you'll change your results: 3 Tested Tactics You Can Immediately Apply

07 min read

So you've hired a marketing team, or perhaps even outsourced to an agency the bulk of the marketing work you need to drive growth. Now what??

First of all, great job. Investing in marketing is one of the most important steps a small business can take.

As Peter Drucker once said,

Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.

Unfortunately, most business owners and executives assume that hiring a marketing team is all they need to do, and the rest will take care of itself.?

If you're stuck in this mindset, it might cost you and your company a lot this year.?

Here's why:

Marketing isn't just limited to the marketing department.

In today's digitally connected world, marketing begins when your prospect is still a stranger to your brand and continues long after they've transacted with you.

Marketing doesn't just happen offline via traditional media, like back in the day. The buyer journey has expanded and evolved to account for the shift in consumer behavior. Let's take a look at two stories to prove this point:

Prospect #1:

Consider Tom, a first-time dad who wants to buy his son a bike. His son has been asking for a specific model for a while now, so Tom has decided now would be an ideal time to surprise him.

Tom takes out his phone while stuck in traffic and asks Google for suggestions on the best bikes for twelve-year-old boys. Indeed, Tom finds the same model recommended as ideal in an article that reviewed the top ten best bikes for preteens and teens.

Tom also notices an ad with a special offer during his search, but he decides to check out his local bike store first.

A few weeks later, Tom is in his local bike store, checking out the same model, but soon realizes the price is much higher than what he originally saw.

So he goes back to the online store to check if the deal was still available and whether they would deliver the bike to his office.

Prospect#2:

Janette wants to buy a surprise gift for her mom, so she asks Georgina (her not-so-tech-savvy sister) to find a specific perfume that her mom loves.

Janette goes online to find the link and then sends it over to Georgina, who sees the exact brand and where to find it nearby. Once Georgina is at the local beauty store, she realizes they have a perfume variation. So she asks Janette whether she should buy something slightly different or keep shopping.

Digital queen Janette responds, "Don't worry, I got you covered. Let me find the stores closest to your home that you can call to confirm they have what we need so you don't have to drive around."

Janette finds a couple of stores that sell the brand and sends their contact details to Georgina, who promptly calls each store while at the original beauty store.

Within a few minutes, she discovers one of the stores is not only holding the exact brand, but they can also deliver it for a little added cost. It's a no-brainer. She doesn’t even need to drive anywhere else.

By the end of the day, the sisters get the surprise gift they wanted.

Both these examples detail the evolution of how we all behave as consumers. You know this is true because you're doing the same thing in your personal life when making purchase decisions.

Buyers have a lot more power and choice in today's market. They integrate offline and online habits seamlessly into their decision-making process.

Unfortunately, the final purchase is made not with the "best" business, but with the business that matches their demand best.

What does this have to do with your business’s marketing?

Everything.

Your marketing must consider this buyer's journey if you want it to be a lucrative investment.

And that means the marketing team you hire (whether in-house, outsourced, or hybrid) must work together with the rest of the departments to ensure they create a seamless process for the buyer to become a customer, regardless of where that buyer first encounters your brand.

So here are three tactical changes to make with your marketing team:

? Personalized accountability

When I'm brought into a company to work with the marketing team, it is surprising to me how unproductive most corporations are.

I guess my lack of corporate nurturing makes my approach a little too unconventional. But I just don't get why (unless you're a massive company with thousands of employees) strategy sessions should carry on for weeks and sometimes months. Employees tend to spend more time in meetings than actually executing their craft.

This is mainly due to the fact that there's not enough individual accountability.

Regardless of the size of your marketing team, whether they are 100% in-house, 100% agency outsourced, or a blend of the two, create personalized accountability so that each role has well-defined monthly KPIs that your team can break down into weekly and monthly mini-milestones.

? Access to expert guidance

Do you know the value of having an expert whispering marketing secret in your ear on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?

Most winners would say this is what makes the difference between a marketing team crushing it and a mediocre one generating the same stagnant results month after month.

The marketing world, especially digital marketing, changes faster than the COVID strain. While your team is busy grinding on the daily operations, they're totally in the dark when it comes to noticing changes in best marketing strategies.?

They may have learned strategies and tactics that worked well in 2010 (while getting their degrees), but if they use those same moves in 2022 to build an audience and drive engagement and revenue, they'll fall flat.

I know you know this! Yet you still don't change things up.

Sidenote: Remember when setting up a Facebook Business page was THE way to grow an audience and your business?

Yes, some people still advise senior leadership to use that same strategy on social, but, as we all know, FB's organic reach is abysmal. You can have hundreds of thousands of followers, and less than 1% will see your content—if you're lucky!

Your FB Business page gets no traction no matter how great your content is. And yet your marketing team is giving you monthly reports on how many new followers they could get? Oh boy!????♀?

What am I saying here?

Give your people to access real humans who are experts on the latest and the best digital marketing strategies. Your team has a better chance of making marketing work when they marketing for the year we're in.

? Unified communication strategy

If your business has been around since before the internet, there's a high chance silos are killing your growth.

My favorite types of businesses are family-run enterprises. Working in Italy, these are the majority.

They are always full of challenges (that's probably why I like them so much), but I realize that many of the difficulties come from poor leadership and a communication breakdown.

If your sales, product, and marketing departments operate like different bodies, you WILL have a problem. All these departments need to work as seamlessly as your hands and legs do while you go on your morning run.?

You need a unified communications strategy that creates consistent brand messaging for both your customers and employees.

You also need the tech that enables these different departments to align, track, and measure that buyer's journey that we discussed at the beginning.

Even if you think your business is doing well or that your employees communicate well, if you see inconsistency in your revenue or if people can't quite differentiate between you and your competitor(s), chances are, there's a crack somewhere.

Fix that, and your brand equity (and marketing metrics) should improve.

A final thought:

I understand that, as a small or medium-sized business, cash flow is your priority. And I love that. Making money and sales should be an important part of your strategy.

However, we need to recognize that even if you have a great product that people need, in today’s world, you won’t be in business very long if your marketing is off.

Today's marketing is very different from the marketing of the ‘90s or early 2000s.

Make the shift from the mindset of seeing marketing as an expense and realize that it's the only thing that can guarantee your business continues to thrive in a digitally connected world.

Well, now I have a question for you: What's your #1 challenge when it comes to marketing your business??

Share your thoughts via DM or Email me your thoughts: [email protected]

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