We must be critical as the situation is critical and, nothing is more important than the business.

Gone are the days of when complex Marketing Success Metrics appeased the Board – Now, if we spend a Pound a Euro or a Dollar, we must know how many Pounds, Euros or Dollars we are getting back and when.

The new Marketing backstops…

  • The only measurement of real success is orders and revenue
  • Nobody is interested in your company, your brochure or your website
  • Nobody is waiting to be interrupted by your email or advert

 

These might sound harsh but, its how we must think in 2020 and beyond.  If we think the reverse, we continue wasting time, getting further behind and wasting money.

 Let’s unpack this….

What is the real measure of success in Marketing?  Answer:  Orders and revenue.

It always was and always should have been but, somewhere down the line it became cloudy.  I dig into this a little deeper in a previous blog here.

The unspoken truth…

We work with a lot of Marketing people.  The majority are acutely aware that, these days, their relationship to driving revenue into the business is questionable.

A Marketing leader who still does email marketing told us, "email marketing doesn’t work".  So why do they continue doing it?   Because they can measure the response and it gives them some data to show the Board.  The Board sees activity and believes this is a good measure, they can see ‘things’ being done.  How is this helping the business?

If your Marketing does not correlate to moving the dial on leads, something is wrong.

Marketing – Metrics – Mess

Recently we were shown that a marketing campaign had achieved 250,000 impressions. This resulted in a 0.5% download rate of a pdf.  Wait for it…. this was being reported as a success.

Look across your business, where would you accept a 99.5% failure rate as a win….?

To quote Elvis Costello in ‘Beyond Belief’ — “History repeats the old conceits.  The glib replies the same defeats…”.


Is spending money on your brand important right now?

A business leader told me recently that they were spending a small fortune having their website and brand revamped for the “new post-covid world”.   I asked why and, if web traffic is where their business comes from and,  what the calculation was that lead to the realisation that a new website was the answer… (?)  

”No, but our Marketing team said we needed to get ahead of the game and work on our brand loyalty”...What game, what brand loyalty?   In the Business to Business (B2B) space it’s about quality and price, we earn our place at the table and we don’t stop earning it.

If you told me that 60-70-80% of your business comes from your website, I could see why that brand and website are important.  And I’d also wager you are in the Business to Customer (B2C) space.

If a supplier managed to get you on your phone today and said they wanted 30 minutes to tell you about their brand – how would you react?

Working on the principle that nobody is interested in your products and services brings a fresh perspective and challenges you to think deeper.

For a business to sell to a business it requires a connection and conversation. 

We must be critical as the situation is critical:  Does your brand, your brochures, your adverts, your cold calling and your emails create predictable, repeatable and scalable business for you?

Interruption Marketing was dead way before Covid hit….

  • Do you enjoy adverts?  Do you buy for your company from adverts?
  • Do you look forward to marketing email campaigns?  Do you buy for your company from Marketing email campaigns?
  • Do you stare at the phone waiting for a cold call? Or do you block them like we all do….? 

I would bet that you hate adverts, marketing emails cold calls as much as I do.  I know out clients do.

Why do you keep throwing good money after bad at this in the hope that it will catch?

Email marketing came bout in the 1990s, cold calling in the 1980s and Advertising came about in The Great Depression of the 1930’s

Which other function of your business relies on vintage tools and methods?  If we operated our HR, HSE or Financial strategies on 9o year old thinking, tools and techniques we would be out of compliance and out of business soon.  Most of this stuff was dead or dying years ago, why do we think its going to be any more use in a vastly transformed Post-Covid commercial world?

One of our prospects said recently "So, are you saying that just putting more stuff on LinkedIn will fix our Sales pipeline issue?".   Not at all, that won’t make a blind bit of difference. 

We train and coach companies to become strategic with Social Media.  Complete end to end business transformation through Social.   Optimised, buyer-centric – Repeatable and scalable.

Nothing is more important than the business…

Clearly our health and out family life are but, when it comes to the business, nothing is more important than the business…

Working on that principle, we must recognise that Marketing is generally broken. 

Where an organisation is stuck in the gap between ‘what they did’ and ‘what they know they need to do’, there is a void.  In this void, you find ‘hope’ and ‘fingers crossed’ and….and nothing happens.

However you dress it up 99.5% failure rate is appalling.  If ‘nothing is more important than the business’, then we must take action.  We must move out of the void, leave ego and history behind and embrace all that will bring us out of the situation, stronger and pointing in the correct direction.

The answer to all of this is doing Social Media strategically and correctly, you cannot simply dabble with this, you have to go all in.   

The company above is clinging to hope that that simply doing more of what they did before is the answer.   However much we hope, we all know its not a bankable strategy.

In the same group, this marketing-run, centralised approach has netted barely more than 20 new targeted connections, the Sales teams that understand Social Selling have achieved an average of 500 new targeted connections per person in the same time period.


The new focus for Marketing teams

Marketing has a new role in the modern Social Media Strategy:  Steering the team, guiding, co-ordinating, motivating, reporting/measuring and feeding back.

In analogue organisations, there is a risk that Marketing is becoming an ineffective overhead rather than a key position.  All because it used to be the case that Marketing would be creating leads for Sales, now less and less.

It worked this way back when the buyer wasn’t digitally enabled and when it was difficult to find who your competitors were.  Back then it was also difficult to find out if whether you were telling the whole truth or not…..“We are the sector leader, solutions focussed and client centred” would be a tough statement to disprove.  Today, Marketing is an additional, unnecessary step between Sales and the prospect - The prospect can find the seller and the seller can find the prospect…PS - They can also find your competitors.

Marty Rubin said, “every line is the perfect length if you don’t measure it”.  Have you ever asked your Marketing team what the measures they use really mean for the business – Perhaps it is time to get your own ruler and measure that line yourself.

As the Pandemic grips on and lockdown measure of varying degrees continue to impact our businesses, do we really understand the modern buyer and how to get to them in 2020….?

Let’s get you and your organisation working Social Media strategically and professionally - Optimised and buyer centric – Predictable, repeatable and scalable.


Lets connect and talk about this, you can find me here.

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite