Very slowly, then all at once

Earnest Hemingway was once asked how he went bankrupt. His reply was, "Very slowly, and then all at once."

I have had three separate discussions over the past two weeks with investors who are looking for some fractional consulting help. They all stated that they have essentially stopped marketing spend, and nothing has happened. So they were questioning why they needed to keep going.

It seems as if we are forgetting about how marketing works. Marketing is a cumulative effort where each channel supports the other channels. In B2B marketing, things like Webinars and Content do not necessarily create an immediate response, but when the buyer is ready to act, they will often have consumed your content over time.

This becomes more prevalent with things like site traffic, your SEO rankings and your social media presence. It increases over time and with consistency. When you stop doing this, you do not see an immediate drop in your traffic, it drops over time...slowly, then all at once.

Another analogy for this is flying. Marketing is more like an airplane, not a helicopter. They both fly, but an airplane needs a runway and it needs momentum and air to build up over it's wings to create lift. It slowly climbs to altitude, maintains that altitude, then slowly drops to a landing. A helicopter and lift off and land in the same spot.

The same will hold true for your marketing efforts. When you pull the plug on your marketing it will not fall out of the sky. You will benefit from the work that you have put into over time. But one day, all of the sudden, your site traffic drops by 70% and your CEO and investors will panic...then blame marketing for not doing it's job.

The same holds true when you take strategy out of marketing, which is another trend I am seeing in B2B marketing. Many companies are focusing on the tactics of marketing and equating marketing with demand generation only. That's fine, and it will not have an immediate impact on your business. But over time, you are going to lose the value of a clear and consistent storyline for your business. Then your demand generation will not work as well, and you are going to wonder why.

Marketing, at one point, used to be about the 4 P's. Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. Now it is often being pushed just to Promotion. Over time, that will create a huge hole in your business, and it will be difficult to recover from. It may have already happened. Especially in the software business. I know of many companies running layoffs, especially in marketing and very few are looking to strategy to solve this.

I wondering who the blame falls on after marketing is no longer there to blame?