If you’re so clever, how come you’re not rich?

Because, sometimes in life, I get the feeling that I am doing everything right, but not getting a better result.

Sound familiar?

This is a common concern for marketers. In marketing, you can be deploying every tool and meeting every benchmark for investment, response rates and SEO, and yet, things are still not going your way.

Here are 5 points of failure that may be holding you back.

1. Get the message right

Is what you are saying to the market clear, timely, relevant, compelling, insightful, shareable and concise? Chances are, you are not obeying all the rules, so it’s time for a refresh. A good place to start is to say your elevator pitch. Say it out loud to yourself looking in the mirror. If you don’t believe it, no one else will.

2. Stop talking to the wrong people

Does your database actually reflect your total addressable market? You may well want to reach tier two fashion retailers, but have you excluded those that have no money, have just bought new technology, have a reputation for benchmarking you so they can renegotiate with their incumbent, or are only half way through a merger, and so on?

3. Stop talking more than you listen

Are you tracking the lead journey or simply firing off the same old content to the same people every week? If your content and communications strategy does not respect the way your prospects interact with it, then you are simply not reading the buy signals.

4. Don’t just keep up with your competitors

Of course you have to monitor them, in order to ensure that you are not simply just another ‘me too’. However, their lack of ambition, innovation and imagination may simply rub off on you and dampen your performance. Or kid you into thinking you are doing just about enough.

5. Stop thinking you are not good enough

If what you are selling is not the best solution for the market you are addressing, then it might be time to find another job. However, chances are that you do have something amazing, and you deserve a hearing. Achieving this means talking continuously and enthusiastically about the value your market gets from working with you.

If you want to break bad habits and launch a marketing strategy that gets you where you need to be, give me a call on 07775 760876.