Making mistakes is important. It means we’re trying, doing and at times, failing. In my 15 year career, I’ve made a lot of professional mistakes, but I don’t regret any of them. It’s how I’ve learned to adapt in order to succeed.
However, avoiding these 7 far too common mistakes can make your marketing dollars stretch further and make your impact bigger:
Mistake #1 - Not relying on research
Out of all of the mistakes I see repeatedly made at companies of all sizes – from startups to Fortune 500 companies – this is the one that’s likely the most common. And understandably so; brand sentiment studies, competitive analyses, focus groups, product user testing, and other forms of market research often come with hefty price tags.
Without timely and at least directional research, it will make developing annual and quarterly strategies difficult – not to mention it will make accurately targeting, positioning, and prospecting customers nearly impossible.
In lieu of commissioned research, you should rely on website and product usage data, interviews with sales and customer service, interviews with existing customers, Google searches, industry publications, and free surveys.
TIP: Research is essential across most departments in an organization. Combine your efforts by bringing stakeholders from Marketing, Sales, Product and other disciplines together to determine the key questions that you’re struggling to answer as a firm.
With questions bound to overlap, you can map out the research that will make the most short-term and long-term impacts across the company.
Mistake #2 - Skipping foundational customer docs
I have to say, this one probably pains me the most and often goes hand-in-hand with not investing in research.
What’s the saying? “If you try to be everything to everyone, you accomplish being nothing to anyone.”
Even with little to no research budget, marketing teams should ALWAYS consolidate their insights in order to have up-to-date (and regularly refreshed) customer personas and journey maps.
The customer personas and journeys are key to building audience-specific messaging maps and campaign briefs that can help reach the right audiences on the right channels at the right time.
TIP: It seems silly to even say, but talk to your customers.
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of campaign briefs, development, reporting, meetings, etc. But talking to your customers weekly, if not daily, is the best (and cheapest) way to stay informed on their pain points, what they care about, what they don’t care about anymore, their sentiments towards your company or competitors, who their buying committee is, and so much more.
Mistake #3 - Neglecting your website strategy
Your website can make or break your business. It’s your face, your first impression, your storyteller, your sales tool, your source-of-truth, and your e-commerce center.
Too many marketers make the website the afterthought – creating campaigns and then asking “Wait, where can we put this on the website?” Or they lead with creative – developing the design and layout first instead of starting with wireframes built off of UX research and testing.
Whether a lead gen campaign, brand campaign, remarketing campaign or other effort, it should always begin with:
a strategy for where it should live on the website,
how it fits into your search and optimization strategies, and
how it will be tracked.
TIP: Create a calendar for continual conversion rate optimization testing, ideally with 2-week sprints.
While this should be broader than just your website (think ad testing and email testing too), it’s important to have a strategy in place for A/B testing headlines, CTAs, value prop messages, creative elements and so much more.
Just be careful – make sure you know how you’re going to measure the effectiveness of the test before you implement it and don’t run too many tests at once. I’ve seen leaders make pivots across too many channels at once, which makes it almost impossible to effectively determine what drove success or failure.
Mistake #4 - Underestimating your customers
As a marketer, we often fixate on the net new leads and don’t pay enough attention to older unconverted leads, as well as the most important audience of all: retained customers.
Close rates for new prospects typically hover between 5-20%, yet that rate jumps up to 60-70% for existing customers.
This means that remarketing in the form of emails, loyalty programs, abandoned cart strategies, cross-selling/upselling and other methods can be 3-4x more effective than net new acquisition tactics.
TIP: Have a strategy for continually collecting testimonials and case studies from happy customers.
Using those quotes and materials can be very powerful for helping to upsell/cross-sell with other customers, as well as helping to close mid-to-lower funnel prospects.
And don’t forget to build an email strategy focused specifically on those new and long-time customers to keep them engaged and informed on new product launches and updates.
Mistake #5 - Overestimating social media followers
Believe me, I know this one can be an unpopular opinion… but the effort isn’t always worth the squeeze when it comes to social media.
While I’m the first to admit that social media can do wonders, especially for direct-to-consumer brands, I’ve struggled to see a meaningful payoff from organic social for many B2B brands. Now, there are well-known exceptions to the rule (think Salesforce, Hubspot, IBM, Adobe), who are category leaders with major market shares and large built-in subscriber bases.
It’s important to remember, that just because TikTok or the latest social media platform is popular, it doesn’t mean:
it’s where your audience is and
it’s worth your time (because time is money).
Too many people place too much importance on number of social followers and the latest platform or trend. In doing so, they can make the mistake of investing too much time, budget, or headcount on social media efforts without the research or metrics to back it up.
TIP: Consult those customer personas and focus your efforts on the social media channel(s) that are most aligned with your key decision-maker(s).
Start by doubling down on just one or two social channels organically and through paid ad tests. For B2B marketers, LinkedIn will likely be your best bet.
To amplify your efforts, boost posts with a modest budget and empower your company leaders to share content organically on their accounts. Remember, most people would rather follow an industry expert instead of a brand.
Mistake #6 - Lacking reliable metrics & reporting
I’ve been at companies with no reliable data and I’ve been at companies drowning in too much data. Although I’d pick the side of too much data any day of the week, it’s important that said data is clean and at least directionally accurate.
Full funnel data is key.
This means, the ability to monitor performance from your media dollars down to your close rate and retention. To do this, you’ll need to make an investment in the systems necessary to tag, monitor and visualize metrics in real-time.
TIP: Monitor performance daily, but don’t react to every blip.
A good leader empowers their team to live in real-time data. However, an obsession with every data point without an understanding of the bigger picture can have you pivoting prematurely (and driving your team crazy).
Instead, align with your team and stakeholders on the key metrics for success and stick to timeframes for testing, optimizing and reporting – every 2 weeks is generally best to coincide with your conversion rate testing sprints.
Mistake #7 - Not aligning on priorities
Like a lack of foundational audience insights, this one pains me to no end as well. I’ve been at organizations, big and small, that have departments marching in different directions and even sub-functions within marketing (brand, product, etc.) with competing priorities.
While different areas of a business or a department serve different functions and therefore will have different focuses, misalignment on key priorities can lead to chaos and failure.
Everyone on the marketing team should know what the key priorities of the business are for the quarter. They should also know what the key priorities for the department are. Most importantly, they should know what their individual priorities and goals are in supporting those initiatives.
TIP: Marketing departments and their individual members should have no more than about 3-5 key goals and priorities per quarter.
Any more than that and you’re risking biting off more than can be chewed, sacrificing quality for the sake of quantity, and both confusing & burning out your team in the process.
Any less than that and you’re lacking purpose, not contributing to what the business needs, and at risk of having work flounder along with employee satisfaction.
Note, that’s not to say that you can’t and shouldn’t achieve more than 3-5 things every quarter. Aim big, but if you’re not aligned on what’s a MUST DO vs. a NICE TO HAVE then you and the team will get lost in a sea of small and big projects.
Looking to hire a marketing leader who has already learned from these common mistakes? DM or email me at cbright23@gmail.com.
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