5 sure signs that it's time to re-think your marketing strategy (or get one).
The answer to your business woes may well be revealed by paying a little more attention to your marketing strategy. Or by completely overhauling it. Or writing one for the first time...
1. You’re in a freeze-state
When it comes to business marketing, surely we all recognise this state.
You know you need more content to share - whether it’s pithy social media posts, engaging deep-dive blog or newsletter content, or a complete website overhaul - but you simply cannot find the words. The ideas have all departed. Your mind is a blank.
Well, I’m here to tell you that this stasis, this pause-state, usually stems from the knowledge that something needs to change, that something isn’t right with the usual style of content that you’ve been sharing until now.
Perhaps you know you need to change your message, to think bigger or fundamentally differently. or perhaps you know your preferred platforms simply aren’t serving your business any longer.
When you need new clarity, a renewed sense of purpose, momentum and consistency in your messaging and a good hard jolt out of that freeze state, it’s a new marketing strategy you need.
2. Your messaging has become confused or inconsistent
Something I see very often is that a business that started out with a nice clear message - we deliver X for Y - and was able to be beautifully creative and consistent with that message has suddenly found itself with an array of different, more complex messages and that beautiful clarity has been lost.
Often these mixed messages actually come from a place of growth. A successful business will naturally change and evolve as the services and products are developed to better serve their clients and customers. Perhaps new offerings at varying price points have emerged or the range of products has expanded to solve a greater array of problems for different customers.
But, now your original messaging strategy needs to change with the times.
Perhaps you need to change the central message entirely, or simply create a hierarchy of messages to provide clarity for you in your content creation process and to support your customer experience. Either way, a more match-fit marketing strategy will support you as you to continue to grow your business.
3. There’s change afoot
If you’re about to undertake a significant change in the way you run your business - a major collaboration, a new business partner, a change in your location, new employees or anything else related to the fundamental day-to-day running of your business, then you’ll need to make sure that your marketing strategy is realigned and ready to embrace the changes as much as you are.
A good marketing strategy enables business owners to hold a mirror up to their business and recognise its strengths and weaknesses, understand its needs and reflect its values, intentions and goals. If something has changed in the working life of the business, then the marketing strategy needs to change with it, to enable it to function properly to serve and support you and your business.
4. You’ve got the wrong kind of clients
The reality of self-employed life is it’s hard to turn down work, even when you know a client isn’t really the right fit for your business.
But, if you’re consistently finding the wrong kind of client walking through the door, then something has clearly gone awry with your marketing. Your using the wrong bait, or maybe not even fishing in the right river.
It’s time to reconsider who it is you’re really looking for to best sustain your business - the kind of client you know needs your product or services and is maybe even actively looking for it. You need to go back to the beginning and lean into the exploratory phase of the marketing strategy creation process, to explore who your ideal client would be and seek to understand where that person might be and how best to communicate with them.
Then you’ve just got to reel them in…
5. You’re losing people along the way
If you’re finding your clients aren’t quite making it past the finishing post, it suggests your customer experience journey is not quite up to scratch; you’ve got a leak somewhere along the line that needs to be found and plugged.
You may find that the recruitment element of your strategy is absolutely spot on - you find your people and engage their interest and maybe even get them through the door. But, perhaps the follow up part of the process is just not pulling its weight, people are losing sight of you, losing interest, feeling pressured or not having their doubts or concerns addressed quickly or sufficiently.
You’ll need to take a long hard and honest look at the whole customer journey from start to finish in order to work out where the issues occur and be prepared to rethink how you move your ideal clients along from one phase of the journey to the next, in order to make sure you’re consistently reaching the very end point.
If this sounds like a useful exercise for your business, help yourself to my Customer Experience Toolkit to identify any leaky touch points and keep things flowing beautifully.