4 Reasons You're Not Growing
Have your marketing efforts plateaued? Are you not seeing the business growth and ROI from your marketing efforts that you had hoped for?
When working with small to medium sized businesses looking for a quick growth strategy, they are often over-eager to dive into marketing without investing in the time to build a strong strategy up front. Why not just spend the money immediately on advertising instead of planning? This is exactly the type of thinking that can hold a marketing campaign back from its full potential.
While there are many tactics that go into a successful digital marketing campaign, building a strong strategy up front will help avoid these four key reasons why you may not be seeing the performance and growth you were hoping for.
1. You don’t know your purpose.
“The brands that will thrive are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.” - Richard Branson
What cause or belief are you working towards? Your purpose statement is important in guiding strategic business and marketing decisions. If you don’t know why you are in business, how will you know how to measure success? More importantly, how will you authentically communicate with your customers to get them to join your cause and build loyal advocates? Whether you are out to be the next great piece of technology or the next best service provider, know why you do what you do and the belief that motivates you everyday. Without a clear understanding of your purpose, decision making becomes difficult and priorities aren’t well defined to have a sound strategy for growth.
2. You don’t have a clear mission, vision or values.
“Vision always precedes strategy.” -Michael Hyatt
In addition to your purpose statement, having clear mission, vision and value statements is important before executing a marketing plan and making strategic marketing decisions. Do your partners share the same values? Are you pursuing customers who share your mission and vision? When it comes to creating a strategy to increase leads and grow your business, knowing your mission, vision and values will help you focus on the areas of the market and customers who will bring the most value and growth. At SpotOn, our values are present in our daily decision making and process to effectively manage resources and relationships to gain market leadership for the brands we work with.
3. You don’t know your audience.
“Everyone is not your customer.” - Seth Godin
While it may be tempting to try to reach as many people as possible, make the most of your resources with a targeted marketing strategy. Use your purpose and mission, vision, value statements to find your brand voice and build personas of individuals who share the same beliefs and values. The personas will help you understand your target audience and how and where they are searching and consuming content. According to Google, marketers who rely only on demographics to reach consumers risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers. Understanding your target audience’s behavior will open opportunities to increase your visibility and share more relevant content to get you and your brand noticed.
4. You manipulate instead of inspire.
“People don’t buy what you do they buy why you do it.” - Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek explains it best in his book Start With Why. If you aren’t inspiring your customers to do business with you, you’re manipulating them with short-term strategies. While manipulations may lead to transactions, they don’t lead to authentic customer experiences that build loyalty, and the more loyal customers you have, the more brand advocates you have who are now amplifying your marketing efforts. Build a digital marketing strategy around content and messaging that will inspire and build trust and add value to your customers to build brand advocates.
Whether you are just starting out or have plateaued and need to re-assess your marketing efforts, start with understanding these four key areas to set your business up for growth and success.