Getting Results From Your Marketing: Now and Later
Dacia Coffey
Fractional Chief Marketing Officer | Keynote Speaker | Revenue Acceleration | Marketing Plans | Branding, Differentiation & Messaging | CEO
Hello LinkedIn, Dacia Coffey here and welcome to Wednesday!
This is the written edition of my weekly series called Corporate Caffeine.?Today's focus is on?Getting Results From Your Marketing!?
FYI - I host this series live on?Facebook ?&?LinkedIn , post these episodes to?YouTube , and have a bonus?podcast ?covering a lot of this content and more.?
So, let's jump right in!?
Getting Results From Your Marketing: Now and Later
Understanding how long it takes to launch a new initiative and get results from your marketing is essential.
Author Grant Cardone says things will always be ten times more than you think, whether it's ten times more money, time, or attention.
While it doesn't matter if it's three or ten times more, understanding that concept in your marketing is key.
You're going to put things forward, there's going to be things you didn't know about before, and you're going to have to figure them out.
Getting into a mindset where you are okay when things don't go perfectly is crucial.
There will be slowdowns, people will cancel, and people will miss deadlines that you're counting on. You're going to miss deadlines, and other things come up that can interfere with them.?
It's Going to Take a Lot More Than You Thought to Finish Something Significant
In his classic book, “The War of Art” Steven Pressfield calls this 'the resistance'. Launching something worthy will make you feel resistance to getting it across the finish line.?
The second thing vital for creating content is finding out what's involved, which is essential for creating content.
You've got to maintain consistency
Ensure you are getting ahead, and then learn the process. Before committing to a timeline, you must understand what must happen.
The technology, publishing pieces, and the various things you must submit must be figured out. You need consistent titles, and remember that even the smallest details can prevent you from making progress?
Progress Over Perfection
One good rule of thumb for when you are launching something new is: Progress over perfection.
It is helpful at this stage not to overthink things because mistakes tend to not mean as much at the very beginning.
Go make your mistakes; get it out there!
The closer you launch, you will start rethinking what you're putting out there because you'll start to feel vulnerable.
If needed, there is endless helpful information out there on branding, created by some incredible, talented people.
If you're going through the proper process, you're just going to have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and you know that things are not going to be a hundred per cent perfect, and it's okay.
You see this repeatedly with people relaunching a website or brand, changing the name, or launching a new division or product.
People will rethink their decisions, try not do that.
Take the time to plan intentionally. Shake out all the bugs, and tap into the important, smart people in your life to help you.
But once you and those people have done due diligence to work through your decision-making, it's off the table.
Launch Things and Get Them Out There
?No one will ever be the same as you, so be brave!?No one can ever provide the ideas you have, think your thoughts, your voice, or make the difference you can make.
You are essential and cannot be compared to anyone else because you are unique. So launching things and putting yourself out there is crucial.?
Growing Revenue and Sales
People often get obsessed with a specific tactic.
For instance, should I do a podcast? How do you know whether you should do a podcast? It's a good idea here to take a step back and assess.
You go back and think about who you are trying to reach, what they listen to, and what they are influenced by.
The podcast is then one of the best ways to reach them, so you reverse engineer.
You begin with what you're trying to accomplish in mind, and then you match the things you want to focus on to that pathway to that decision criteria.
So that's what you should be thinking, and that's one way to ensure that you're looking at tactics properly.
Zoom out and understand the marketing or communication tactics they are meant to distribute.
What is that message supposed to accomplish? What is the message, and who is that message for? How is it supposed to resonate?
?Ensure it's being distributed appropriately.
If you are specifically thinking about revenue growth, you've got to think about where the biggest opportunities and challenges are.
?Different tactics have different points of impact.
When you're talking about growing revenue, especially if you're trying to accelerate revenue growth, you have to look at it from a system standpoint.
It's like a machine where each cog and wheel must be aligned because each one moves the next forward. If any cog blows or any part of the system breaks down, the whole system breaks down.
It throws everything into chaos.
You have to look at the entire machine. If the machine is not creating as much output as you want, diagnose where it is breaking down in the system.
What do you need to fix first? You're looking at a business development system.
?The system is cradle-to-grave.
It is how people become aware of a problem. If you solve their problem and extend it through, you have a new customer.
Awareness of the Client's Problem
Awareness of a client's problem should be evident in your band and solution, all the way through to them becoming a customer.?
领英推荐
It should be clear the value you are bringing to your customers.?
Technically you can extend that into deepening the relationship, referrals, and client delight, but let’s end at the invoice for simplicity.
You're looking at the points of impact for marketing and sales. But your business development efforts need to hit as well. This is about balancing getting the results now and planting seeds for results later.
What Does That Look Like?
If you work backward to forward, making improvements and optimizations close to the point of sale is where you get the biggest impact.
Lead Gen is Not a Magic Wand
Lead gen should not just be the result that a business owner wants out of their marketing, especially if leads are being qualified even when they won't buy anything.
So many problems occur if that is not put into proper context.
You must focus on late-stage sales development if you want a significant short-term impact.
That means messaging and choreographing your customer experience, so it is easy to say yes.
It is easy to tell the truth. It is easy for your prospect to get educated when they have absolute clarity and confidence in you.
They are avoiding buyer’s remorse
Or, if they have potential buyer's remorse, they're being honest with you so that you can guide them through.
?How can you get more wins, and how can you improve your win-loss ratio? You’ve also got to consider whether you can accelerate your sales cycles.
The answer is yes! You can impact how quickly buyers move things forward.
Sometimes, there are, of course certain bureaucracies and consensus-building activities that have to happen.
In general, you can make sales pipelines much more efficient because people often stay in the messaging portion of building trust, and the client doesn't want to stay there.
They want to know that you can do the job and move forward in their decision-making process.
Look At Quality
Unqualified or low-quality leads are not the perfect fit for your company. Even considering them is a massive waste of time.
It can also accidentally lure you into changing your offering or constantly trying to tweak your message and solution for somebody that's just not a fit.
These types of leads are huge landmines for your focus and discipline.
You should focus on how to create increased revenue and value for our customers.
You've got to be ruthless with qualifying better and early. Then, you take those qualification criteria and that process to ensure that you know the prospect is being guided well all the way through.
Then you apply it to your marketing.
If poor-quality leads are coming in, what can we do to change that? There's got to be high accountability and clarity regarding that transition.
When you see a massive gap between marketing and sales (i.e. the passing on of unqualified leads), this is a major waste of time, money and opportunity across all industries and markets and is a significant barrier to revenue growth.
Marketing can impact all of this.
You need to consider the total potential points of impact, not just the marketing points of influence, as long as you ask the right questions, target going deeper and broader with existing clients, optimize your list, and build a larger list.
Building an audience space, but the further away from the point of sale, the longer the runway is before you see results.
But, you don't think like that, as you don't always think logically when you are hungry, frustrated, disappointed, or wish you had seen results yesterday.
Be Practical
Be practical about the fact that you're planting different types of seeds, and some seeds will bloom and harvest in three months.
But other seeds will bloom and harvest in three or ten years, but you must plant a well-balanced garden of different tactics.
This will nurture and produce different results at other points in your business timeline.
Have a Healthy Marketing Mix
Make sure you have a healthy marketing mix, a well-blended strategy, and an excellent idea of what you need right now.?
You have to look at your business development system.
If you have optimized certain aspects of your sales pipeline, find which ones haven't always been working and look for optimization opportunities.?
In addition, what seeds need to be planted and reverse engineered to nurture tomorrow's pipeline and ensure it's the highest quality possible?
Look At the Total Journey
Don't hate the journey.
The journey is the best part! Success is the journey, and success in every moment of your life because you are breathing and winning or learning.
This is because you've already created a mindset that applies to revenue growth, business growth, and team building.?It applies to personal awareness, personal growth, and personal wealth.
Your decision about your success already defines everything you will get in the future.
So whether you're looking at marketing or a personal journey, you need to look at it as an entire journey.?
You need to put your best plans in place but also recognize that at every moment, every day, you will adjust, listen, learn, and evolve.
Maintain a longevity point of view to prepare for tomorrow, but you can live in the moment.
Ensure you are already a recipient of success, and you can learn how to receive more success because you've been planning for it and not hoping or praying.
Onward and Upward!
Interested in talking to a marketing expert? Schedule a time? HERE
Make Sure To Catch The Latest Corporate Caffeine Content Below
DR Marketing Specialist: I help brands and businesses scale up their sales, leveraging on the EFFECTIVE power of direct response words.
2 年Getting to make mistake doesn't make you a failure, Infact, it give more insight on what you're doing wrong plus you'll surely learn from it. And if you're someone like me, Then, Learning from mistake will increase your percentage of being successful. So don't feel bad when you made mistake, Because it's an attempt to succeed. Dacia Coffey nice to hear this piece from you.