Why Marketing Plans Fail

Less than half of the original marketing plans succeed, according to recent research. However, failure is a way to success, and you should never give up. Measuring your results will give you a clear indication of what you should change about your marketing and you can act - almost - real time, thanks to digital technology.

Avoiding failure is one of the things people love doing, so here is a list of what you can do to reduce the risk of failure.

Not Clear about the Problem

Marketing plans fail primarily because people are going out too wide. I have been to plenty of networking events where people stood up and said:

"I can work with anyone".

It's not true! If you are trying to please everyone you will end up pleasing nobody. So, if you are a "jack of all trades", this has to change.

When crafting your LinkedIn profile, you should be clear about what problems you help people solve and who are the individuals you can help the most. Believe me, it will make a huge difference in your marketing results.

So, instead of saying: "I make you feel good about your weight" for example, you can say this: I help middle-aged professionals who drive a lot accept their body so they can finally lose weight, get healthy, spend more time with their family, and improve their career.

So, you are now being specific about the problem. People who drive for work are (generally) living on junk food and have a hectic lifestyle so they don't have time to go to the gym. They feel guilty, so every time they eat something they pile the pounds on. If you can get rid of the guilt and help them accept themselves, they will feel self compassion and start taking action.

Be as specific as you can be!

Lack of Capability Planning

Let's say that you want to get 100 subscribers for your membership site where you provide group coaching. But you don't do the maths.

It all sounds great, but to get 100 people to subscribe, you will need at least 10,000 people on your landing page, if we work out your conversions at 1% which is the average.

If you don't have a plan on getting 10,000 people to visit your signup page (which probably means 100,000 on your email list, you are doomed to failure.

And if you don't have the infrastructure to communicate with, enrol, and motivate those people, deliver the sessions, you will end up with 100 people cancelling on you.

Build the capabilities; learn to walk before you start running!

Choosing the Wrong KPIs

I can see so many people trying to build a personal brand, measuring success in followers and likes.

While these are the indication of how visible you are online, it has nothing to do with your conversions.

The main KPIs you should focus on in your marketing strategy are all flexible and can be improved with changing one or two steps in your funnel.

• Funnel step conversion rates (number of people taken to the next step divided by the number of people on the current step)
• Repeat business customers (number of people who buy more than one product/service divided by the total number of customers)
• Referral power (the number of people recommending you publicly divided by the total number of people you worked with)
• Average customer value (the average spend per customer)

Traffic, likes, and views should not be a part of the KPI pool when building a marketing strategy focussed on conversions.

Wrong Audience (Not knowing them)

Loads of people think that they can deliver results without knowing the people they work with. It's a lie we are telling ourselves.

You need to get to know your ideal clients, and for this you will have to create meaningful conversations. You can join LinkedIn groups, forums, or simply ask people using an online form, quiz, or questionnaire. Putting a quiz at the top of your funnel will help you see clearly about your audience's frustrations, problems, pain points, budget, and more.

You can (re) read my piece about quiz funnels if you would like to get to know your audience better.

Lack of Realistic Goals

Let's say that you want to enrol 100 new clients this year. Do you have the capacity to manage the scale of the campaign, drive enough traffic to your site, and deal with the enquiries?

Can your team manage the work required to pull off the campaign? And have you got the organisational capabilities to wow these new clients?

If not, you are not setting realistic goals, and you will have to go back to the drawing board. You might need to redesign your sales process, so you don't overwhelm the sales and admin team. You might automate a part of client communication. You might simply decide to change what you market; sell a course instead, which will take up less of your resources.

It is probably easier to sell less of the high end products that take up less of your time and energy than hundreds of low ticket items. Plan and improve the conversion rates on all your funnel stages, and you can simply double your income. But you have to be sure you can get enough traffic and deliver.

Simplistic View of the Market

We have seen this before a lot! You look around and say; those people are in XYZ industry. They make money. I will do the same! So you start off and you don't get the same results.

What many people forget about is that they will need to walk he same path; people you see in the life coaching industry, for example, went on a journey 10+ years ago. And they probably failed their way to success.

So, you will have to think realistically, and focus on your "zone of genius", instead of what you think is popular.

Being authentic is more important than going where the wind blows.

The simplistic view of the market means that you refuse to niche down to people you are more likely to deliver results for. And that's a mistake I have made myself. By not niching down, I missed out on opportunities to work with my ideal clients and stay in the zone of genius. And yes, I have attracted some nightmare clients, too. People I simply couldn't work with and deliver results for, because we were not on the same page and their expectations were miles away from what I offered.

Trying to Copy Others

I have my fair share of copycats here on LinkedIn and on other platforms, too. I block one business or individual, and another one pops up. But that doesn't really bother me. In fact, I know that they will not get anywhere with copying me.

There was a time when I posted about something on the company page and within 5 minutes another post about the same topic appeared. It wasn't particularly bad, just annoying.

Then I discovered that the style of my site and LinkedIn profile was copied.

But does it bother me? Not anymore.

Why?

Because what I do, how I do it, why I do it is unique. And what works for me might (and will) not work for others. Funnily enough, people even listen to my Hungarian accent, which is very hard to copy. ??

So, copying others will not get you the same results as the person you copied has.

In fact, I have been asked to copy a funnel once and I refused. I just knew it was not going to work (beyond being unethical).

Conclusion

So, now you have the main reasons marketing strategies fail. What are you going to do about it? Is it time to revisit your funnel plan and get back to the drawing board? If that's the case, I think I have something for you.

I created a free funnel health check that will give you all the answers.

Resources:

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/