Why Most Marketing Fails!

Have you been spending money on a variety of marketing initiatives but have yet to see a return. There are probably a number of reasons, but a great place to start is with evaluating the basics. Are you segmenting? Do you understand the needs of your customers? Are you leveraging all of the necessary touch points?

There are many reasons that marketing campaigns fail. They range from poor strategy to poor execution. From a strategic standpoint, if you run East looking for a sunset you won't succeed. On the tactical side, if you have the best strategy but can't execute, success can never happen.

So, what should you look for when trying to evaluate your marketing effectiveness? Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Clear objectives: What are you trying to accomplish? Are your goals specific and measurable? Keep in mind that its difficult to achieve success if your not clear on the outcome you wish to achieve. Have your goal in mind and clearly understood by all of your team members.

2. Develop a Concept Based on Customer Knowledge: Are you meeting a need? What problem are you solving. To succeed, your product, service, and marketing message must be centered around a particular consumer/business problem or need. How does your product solve this need? What differentiates your solution from someone else?

3. Multiple Touches, One Message: Is your marketing well organized, disciplined and thorough? Creating a single ad and publishing it in the October edition of a magazine does not constitute a marketing campaign. Your marketing consist of multiple touches around the same theme.

4. Testing Your Offer, List, Creative: Do you know why your marketing campaign has failed? Most marketers don't. Before you market, determine what tracking you will use and how you will test. Develop a control and test for different elements with each execution. Split tests are best as well as dividing a list and creating multiple offers.

5. Continue Marketing: Quantify results and try again. Make sure that each time you market you are learning something. Data isn't information unless you utilize it in the form of knowledge. Learn from your mistakes and successes. Continually refine and improve your marketing tactics!

Before you throw in the towel, give some thought to your approach. Evaluate each step and determine where you went wrong.. was it your list, your timing, or some other factor. Did you have a clear objective? Did you have the proper tracking in place. Each of these elements can have a positive or negative impact on your marketing results.