8 REASONS WHY YOUR MARKETING IS BAD FOR BUSINESS

8 Reasons Why Your Marketing is Bad for Business

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8 REASONS WHY YOUR MARKETING IS BAD FOR BUSINESS

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Globally, marketing is a trillion dollar industry that is expected to grow even more in the next years. A small or medium organisation spends 10% to 16% of its firm budget on marketing, with the objective of sustaining overall business growth and sales. As a business owner or manager, you want your investments to work for you, not against you. Using marketing tools and techniques inappropriately is not only a waste of money and valuable time; it affects overall business, as well. Bad marketing results in focusing your efforts on the wrong actions, determining the loss of the existing or of the targeted market share. Bad results determine bad employee morale, inconsistency in work and lack of return on investments. At the end of the day, bad marketing is bad business.

To avoid it, here are 8 mistakes that might be pulling you down:

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Reason #1:

YOU DO NOT HAVE A MARKETING STRATEGY IN PLACE

You know how, in soccer, players go on the field with a whole game strategy previously determined by the coach? If they didn’t have a game strategy, they wouldn’t know how to coordinate their moves and they would not function well as a team. Well, image the same scenario: without a marketing strategy, you send your employees out on the field without them knowing what to do. They share different stories about your company, react based on different principles, promote differently the same products. Your company image is scattered and inconsistent, which makes consumers lose trust in your products and services and become reluctant to buying them.

All these, because your marketing strategy captures the most important aspects of your business, as it focuses on how to increase sales and gain a relevant market share that will ensure a sustainable advantage over your competition. At the end of the day, all our efforts businesswise go into obtaining a relevant base of customers/clients that generate consistent revenue. This is why all owners and marketers should prioritise their marketing strategy, as it is vital for business development and positioning.

A marketing strategy should cover the following aspects:

1. Product / Service information:

• What you offer;

• Main attributes of your product / service;

• USP (unique selling proposition).

2. Stakeholders:

• Who they are,

• What they do,

• What they need from you.

Focus on the target audience, employees, partners, suppliers, authorities, and any other segment that may affect or be affected by your business.

3. Positioning your business in your audience’s eyes and addressing their needs.

4. Distribution network;

5. Competition analysis: who are your main competitors, what they offer, what they lack and what differentiates you from them;

6. What is your customer/client referral strategy;

7. What is your customer/client retention strategy;

8. Timeline & Budget – what is the overall budget you are willing to allocate to marketing and what your milestones are;

9. Goals: what they are and how you measure them.

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Reason #2:

YOU DON’T SEGMENT YOUR CONSUMERS

Before you do anything marketingwise, ask yourself who buys your products/services, who are your most and least profitable clients. If you do not already know it, research it. You should not invest in marketing activities until you know who they are directed towards.

Segmentation is different depending on whether you are marketing your products/services at business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C).

If you are targeting B2B, you should cover the following:

• Field of activity (private or public, size, industry);

• What they do with your products (end users / resellers);

• Buying patterns (how often they place orders, what quantities);

• Overall behaviour (who does the acquisition, are they loyal etc.).

If you are targeting B2C, start off with some basic profiling that includes living area, age, gender, studies, marital status, income, occupation. These variables help you create the basic portrait of the person purchasing your products / services, so you know who to address and have a primary understanding of their problems and needs. Once you have all this information, depending on the nature of your business, you might want to go more in-depth and see what they are interested in, what kind of hobbies they have, what magazines they read, what their position in the company is, at what stages they buy your product / services etc.

In B2C especially, an important question is whether the person buying the product / service is the same one as the person using it. If not, you have to find out who the decision maker is and how to address both of them (the person who puts in the finance and the end user). For example: in a family of 3 (mother, father and 13 year old son), the mother does all the grocery shopping. When she goes to the supermarket, her son asks her to buys facial wash. The son may request a certain product or he may not, but, at the end of the day, it’s the mother’s decision what she gets. This decision may be based on her son’s request or on price, promotions, store marketing, advertising of another product, recommendations from other moms etc.

Once you know who your end user and your buyer are, you may properly market your products / services to them.

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Reason #3:

YOUR MARKETING LACKS CLARITYIf you are not very familiar with it, marketing might seem like a creative, spontaneous industry that focuses on vague variables like awareness, likeability and emotional attributes. That is far from the truth, though. As a professional, you need to understand that marketing is all about putting your creative efforts to good use, so as to turn them into business: each action you decide on, each campaign you generate and deliver starts off with premises, has objectives and has to be measured in conversion rates. Doing things on a whim is not appropriate business behaviour, as it will put your products / services through unnecessary risks such as incorrect positioning on the market, incorrect targeting, which will lead to low sales results.

Once you have a strategy, you have to follow it and make sure that all your business communication is consistent and in line with your brand values and personality. This means that everyone in your company, from Human Resources to Sales, from Marketing, to your Chief Executive Officer will be in accordance with one another, so as to promote the same principles, the same brand attitude and address relevant segments of your audience according to your short, medium and long-term goals.

Keep your team updated on your projects, communicate with your employees and keep them informed on your company’s strategy and progress. Make sure that, when they communicate, they respect the company values and communication policy; otherwise they will only confuse your other stakeholders.

When you manage a business, you have to understand that everything you do must be part of a bigger strategy, meant to help you develop. This is why you should always consider how every choice you make affects your company at a bigger level and whether it is in accordance with the message you are targeting at your audiences. If something doesn’t bring added value to your business, do not do it.

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Reason #4:

YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF CONSUMERS’ PROBLEMS AND HOW

TO SOLVE THEMDefining your audience is one of the vital things to do, when you are marketing a service / product, but knowing what you do after that is also extremely important. Once you know who your consumers are, you have to know what kind of problems you are addressing, what the consumers’ behaviour is and how that changes in time.

We start from the premise that each acquisition made by consumers is based on a problem they identify and recognise, a void they need to fill. As a business, knowing the problem puts you one step before the competition, as it contributes to predicting consumer behaviour and overall consumption levels. In time, this helps you understand how to distribute your budget, human resources and efforts depending on seasonal aspects.

According to Kurt Carlson , Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, consumer problems range from big (I haven’t paid my house mortgage) to small (a broken toaster), from personal (tiredness) to professional (overwhelmed), from mental (memory failing) to physical (I am hungry) or social (I feel alone). Other problems arise from difficulties (I can’t lose weight) to opportunities (I have an inheritance).

The solutions for all these problems may be found on the marketplace and different problems may find solutions in the same products/services.

Once you identify the problem, you have to exploit it, by showing consumers the transformation they would undergo if they chose your product / service. Indeed, people buy things to fill a need, but what they get really excited about is being shown how the purchase will change their lives in better. This is why campaigns are always aspirational; they paint a pretty picture that the audience looks up to and promise a better lifestyle. To do this, companies use everything from testimonials, to bloggers, endorsers, content marketing, reviews, advertising etc.

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Reason #5:

WRITING WHAT YOU THINK THEY WANT TO HEAR

Due to the development of technology and the online environment, several channels and tools have become popular in spreading marketing messages. Nowadays, no matter the budget, anyone may advertise online, using banners, pop-ups, blogs, websites, social media, contextual advertising and content marketing. This means that the average person deals with thousands of marketing messages each day, both online and offline, which overwhelm them. In time, the human brain has learned to be very selective and ignore a major part of this information.

According to Tom Pick, studies show that people want to be in control of the content they receive:• 86% of people skip TV commercials;

• 44% of direct mail is never opened;

• 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into.

As a consequence, if you want them to reach your consumers, your messages should be simple, compelling and attractive. You should assess very well what your prospects want to hear from your brand. Sometimes, when you are a business owner, you might easily get carried away with the information you supply people, as you want to focus on the things that are important to you. What you should do, instead, is consider what you want to hear from the brands competing for your attention.

Here are the top 3 aspects that your prospects are not interested in hearing about:• Your company history. Unless you can summarize this in relevant highlights and milestones, no one wants to

hear about how you started, how hard it has been and the efforts you have been making to get where you are.

• Technicalities. Your clients are not interested in technical features of the products you are offering, they do not need to know why something works, but what it does for them.

• Your endless years of success. Talking about how good your company is and praising your team will only look like a desperate attempt to get attention and trustworthiness. Be concise, focus on the most relevant aspects of your success and keep it short and objective.

Instead, here is what you should tell consumers, if you want to win more market share:• What your products/services do for them. Your target is interested in knowing what problem your business

addresses and how it makes their lives better. Once you do this, you already have their attention.

• What you did for others. You don’t have to reveal confidential information, to show people that you are good at what you do and that you helped people just like them / companies just like theirs. In B2B, present prospects with your credentials; write small and concise case studies where you mention earlier successful projects. In B2C, you might want to show before and after photos.

• What are the top reasons why they should choose you instead of competitors?

You should always assess your messages and how they impact your audience to see which work for you. Refine your communication strategy and your focus points according to your feedback, until you reach the best engagement. Don’t settle for anything less than relevancy. Brands are competing for the same consumers and they are using intrusive communications means and channels.

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Reason #6:

IS YOUR CONTENT MARKETING A MARATHON OR A RACE?

Nowadays, marketing is all about relating to people’s emotions and values, creating stories that appeal to your audience and presenting them attractively. This is why you should go out of your comfort zone and engage in newer marketing techniques such as content marketing.

Content marketing is the practice that focuses on generating and distributing relevant content that attracts and retains your target audience, eventually turning them into buyers.

Content marketing is all about putting yourself out there, sharing insight and quality information regarding your brand and industry, with the intent of changing how your audience behaves. Your audience makes decisions based on their knowledge and on previous experiences, which may be wider or broader, accurate or less accurate. In an era where consumers have options for anything they might need, content marketing is king. You, as a brand’s owner / marketer, have to take on the role of cultivating our audience, so as to make them savvier and more aware of the options they have and of the value they should be getting for their money.

This is a long term process that needs time and dedication. Content marketing is all about being prolific. It is not about being the first to share something, the fastest to put information out there, or the one that generates more content in a limited amount of time. Content marketing is a marathon; it takes time and consistent efforts to create a relevant lasting presence.

Before you decide to engage in content marketing, decide whether you really want to follow through. Otherwise, you will have no results and you will only lose time and money.

Here are a few steps you have to respect, so that your content marketing delivers valid results:

• Set objectives. As you might have understood from the information provided in this ebook, everything in marketing is about setting objectives. What do you want to accomplish with your efforts: gain more customers, gain more referrals from existing customers, generate leads, increase engagement etc.?

• Set metrics. Depending on the goals you decide upon, you will need to choose the metrics that will evaluate your work, such as conversions, content performance etc. You might need to do an evaluation when you start, so you have a comparison term.

• Decide on the channels that are more relevant for your business and content. What are the ones that your audience engages most with, where do you find your prospects? Depending on your business, you may want to focus on blogs, forums, magazines, online sites, social media etc.

• Partnerships – decide which the relevant endorsers you should be partnering with are and take measures accordingly. Research the channels most used by your audience and see which the key content generators and distributors are.

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• Always focus on your target and their reactions. Adapt your language and your content to their feedback and core values.

• Have an editorial calendar and keep track of it.

• Assess results and make changes to future campaigns according to them.

Facts and figures about content marketing from the past years 3:

• 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day;

• 9/10 organisations market with content;

• 78% of Chies Marketing Officers (CMOs) think custom content is the future of marketing;

• 72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising, 69% think it’s superior to direct mail and PR;

• Blogs give sites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed Links.

• 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content.

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VIDEO MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Reason #7:

YOU ARE NOT USING VIDEOWhat you, as an owner or a marketer, might be asking yourself is when did video become so important and why you should include it in your strategy. According to Cisco, by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic. This is quite plausible if you take into account the fact that Youtube has been named the second largest search engine worldwide.

Information dating back in 2013, reveals some quick facts about Youtube that will help you understand the power of video:• It transforms the way information is processed online;

• It processes more than 3 billion searches / month;

• 1 billion unique monthly visitors (nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users are on Youtube;

• 100 hours of video uploaded every minute;

• 6 billion hours of video viewed / month .

The B2B Demand Generation Benchmark IndustryView 2013 , issued by Software Advice, places video on top of their respondents’ preferences, before white papers and case studies, free trials etc.

According to expert Susan Weinschenk , people are drawn to video because of very relatable reasons:

• We tend to pay more attention to the fusiform facial area;

• The information conveyed through human voice makes it meaningful content;

• Body language and emotions are contagious and appealing;

• We tend to direct our attention to things in motion.

You may use explanatory videos, testimonials, video blogging, ads, virals, teasers etc.

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Reason #8:

YOU ARE NOT MAKING A CONNECTION

Nowadays every problem has several solutions available on the marketplace. We may all choose depending on custom attributes, budgets etc. But, at the end of the day, what makes the difference are the emotional features you that you transmit to your audience. It is no secret that people make decisions based on emotional factors, that is why, as a business, you should always show your consumers you share the same values. Otherwise, they will choose your competition.

Here are some methods to do so:

• Communicate with your audience. Thanks to the internet, it is very easy for any brand to start a conversation with their consumers and show them they’re interested in their overall experience.

• Ask people whether they are pleased with your products and what they would improve.

• Pay attention to complaints and treat them with respect and consideration.

• Include real-time marketing in your overall strategy.

• Engage in local partnerships to show your target you share their values.

• Engage in corporate social responsibility activities.

• Let your audience meat people from your company. Develop public figures from managerial positions.

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ABOUT USToday, anyone can create a video. Just point and shoot with a Smartphone. But if you’re wanting to create an amazing, tailored, bespoke video, then you’ve come to the right place.

VideoBuzz work in partnership with you to create magic. We have a unique way of drawing out the essence of what you are trying to say and turning it into a visually stunning, highly influential message that your customers will understand and love you for!

Unlike our competitors, we come from a strong background in sales, marketing and business communications. We are messaging maestros with a keen eye for creative design that find the heart of what our clients are trying to say and turning that into a compelling story that resonates deeply.

It can be daunting even just thinking about how your video will come together, to get across the message you need to. That’s our job. All we need from you is to know where you want to get to and the message you are trying to convey to solve your problem.

Go on, give us a go, we’re confident you will be pleasantly surprised.

7 Key Ingredients of an Engaging Video – ©VideoBuzz & Jules Blundell 12

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