Every business owner must make hundreds of decisions every week. Some of them are insignificant, and some are quite important. But ultimately, the outcomes of these decisions determine the results.
Having worked with many businesses over three decades, one deadly mistake I’ve witnessed is they stop putting marketing efforts. The reasons might differ for each business, but the outcome is often the same: the business’s downfall.
In this blog post, I will list five of the most common reasons (or excuses) why businesses stop marketing. Time to get some reality check!
“We Don’t See the Results”
If you need to see the results of your marketing efforts, you’re probably doing it wrong. It might sound simplistic, but there’s a clear-cut logic behind it. Marketing aims to establish your brand in the market and boost your revenue. As long the market has customers, you can land them. Thus, if the marketing fails to deliver, it’s down to how you do it.
The lack of ROI can be down to many reasons, and there’s probably more than one reason behind it. Below are some of the most common reasons:
- Lack of clear goals and strategy
- Efforts in the wrong direction
- Lack of expertise
- Inconsistent efforts
- The gap between expectations & efforts
As you’re running your business, only you can tell what’s causing your marketing to fail. So I’d suggest you reflect on this and also have a discussion with your team for an accurate diagnosis.
“We Don’t Need Marketing”
Opposite to the first reason we saw, people often stop marketing when the business is doing well. It makes sense, but only if you see the short-term. But marketing isn’t about today’s cash flow; it’s about establishing yourself as a brand that people can trust. Do you want to stop encouraging people to trust your products and services? You probably don’t.
Thus, no matter how great your business is today, you must take concrete steps to strengthen your position in the industry. Rather than focusing on your turnover, ask yourself how you want people to know your brand 10 years from now. This will give you a few realizations, for sure!
“We Don’t Have Funds”
“Ravi, how can we market if we don’t have funds?” I hear this a lot, making me smile whenever I hear it. No, I’m not saying that marketing doesn’t need any investment. However, funds are one of the tools to achieve your goals. However, you can achieve your objectives with fewer funds if you use other tools in your arsenal.
You might have seen many startups growing through unconventional marketing strategies. Quite often, these strategies don’t involve massive costs. Instead, they employ ‘growth hacking’ or ‘growth marketing’ to scale their business quickly and with fewer investments. We will talk about it in the latter part of this blog post.
“It’s Too Much Work for Me”
There was a time when marketing was all about advertising. You create advertisements, pay for its promotions and hope for the customers. We call them ‘set it and forget it’s strategies, and their days are long gone.
Today, marketing has evolved massively and is much more personalized and data-driven. Rather than being visible everywhere through advertisements, you need to bring value to your customers through high-quality content. This requires many skills, including copywriting, designing, video editing, strategy etc. Thus, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by it and slam the door.
Business owners must understand that marketing is no longer a one-person job. You have to have people of various talents together and guide them. If you don’t want to do that, then you can hire a marketing agency that’d do that for you. You can choose either of them but not choosing is not an option. Even if you hire an agency to do the job, you will need time and energy, as no one knows your business better than you.
“We Can’t Compete”
No, I’m not going to tell you the ‘David vs. Goliath’ story here. Almost every industry is dominated by a few big names that seem invincible. However, it’s not a valid reason even if you’re miles behind your competitors.
No matter how small you are, you can bring things to the table that your competitors can’t. That’s your niche or USP. Marketing aims to communicate this effectively so that your potential customers start engaging with you. Thus, each day you pass on is a lost opportunity, and there’s no better day to begin than today.
Growth Marketing: Market the Modern Way
If you’ve dipped your toes in the world of marketing, then you might have heard of something called ‘Growth Marketing.’ It’s the most advanced marketing version; you may call it Marketing 3.0.
Although it’s hard to define, growth marketing is an obsession to grow the business quickly. In other words, it’s constant experimentation to engage, acquire and retain customers. It’s an ‘agile’ method of marketing that constantly evolves with customers’ evolving motivations and preferences.
When you do growth marketing, you combine conventional marketing methods (such as SEO, email marketing, and social media) with new-age techniques such as A/B testing, data analysis, etc. Rather than pressing the ‘go’ button and hoping for results, growth marketing is all about trial and error. You might hit or miss, but you don’t stop trying.
If you want to grow your company in today’s age, you have to do what other companies aren’t doing. You need to stay a step ahead. That’s where growth marketing comes in.
LeanSummits: Growth Marketing Agency with Decades of Expertise
Having spent more than three decades in various industries, marketing is a stumbling block for many business owners. That led to LeanSummits, a modern-age growth marketing agency based in Palo Alto.
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