4 Marketing Truths No One Ever Tells You

I wrote a blog a few months ago titled, "5 Reasons why your marketing fails."

I regret writing that blog.

The reason I regret writing the blog is simply this: the reasons I stated for your marketing failure are tactical and only addresses the symptoms. I failed to address the real problem why marketing fails. It's often not due to a solid plan, capable people or enough funding. The real reason marketing fails is because it is not tied to the planned, stated objectives of the business and most owners have not positioned their marketing dollars or efforts to ever reach their stated goals. Hence, marketing is positioned to fail from the start.

I'll explain.

As a marketing strategy coach, I talk to business owners often about implementing and building a marketing strategy. The reasons why different businesses ask for my services is all over the board, but the results they want to achieve using marketing is always the same.

" I want to grow by 10-20-30%"
"We want to increase lagging sales"
"I want to double in revenue over the next 3 years."

Whatever the reason, companies of all sizes, with short/long time spans in business respond the same.

At the beginning of every conversation with business owners and key managers, I ask a series of questions to figure out what they are wanting to do, their perception of what they want marketing to achieve and if it is actually doable. I ask these 7-questions:

1.      What do you want marketing to accomplish?

2.      Why do you believe marketing can solve these problems?

3.      What do you currently have in place? What's worked/not worked in the past?

4.      How do you measure the results of any marketing effort?

5.      What do you believe the role of marketing is in your overall business strategy and goals to grow your business?

6.      How do you/would you contribute to the success of a new marketing plan/strategy?

7.      If we choose to work together, what defined targets, goals or revenue numbers have you defined as achievable based on the size of your organization, resources and budget?

Inevitably the answers are mostly the same. The company believes they can grow big because they experienced quick growth in a short period of time, or they are reselling a new product and believe they can grow, or their sales are lagging and they need leads (lots of leads) to kick-start sales. To solve these problems, an owner believes he/she can increase sales by implementing a bunch of marketing campaigns and tactics to help them grow sales.

Here's the bottom line: Most business owners and leaders view marketing as a series of isolated events intended to work only for a period of time to fix a problem or hit a goal. They don't view marketing as an integrated part of their culture and fabric designed to tell a compelling story, continuously feed the sales pipeline, and nurture unsure buyers until they are ready to make a buying decision. Truth be told, if you were to grow quickly, you might not have the resources in house, processes in place or support staff internally to handle immediate growth. 

MDF dollars only further this thinking by provided dollars to resellers to sell their products. What is missing here is how this efforts (and money) is tied to any strategy or fits into the goals and objectives of the overall business.

What most business owners fail to recognize is that marketing is an investment into the continuous and future growth of their business—with targets that are strategically identified and tied back to overall business goals. It is not an isolated or one-off event.

For these reasons marketing is positioned to fail from the beginning! Marketing ends up being inconsistent. The targets are not defined. It cannot be measured. The marketing activity is not integrated into the overall operations and mission of the organization.

So, what should an owner consider before embarking on a new marketing strategy? Here are the 4 Principles of Marketing Truth that no one ever tells you or writes about:

1.      Successful marketing must be tied to a Sales & Marketing strategy/plan.

2.      The Sales & Marketing Plan must be tied to revenue goals/targets.

3.      Revenue goals/targets must be tied to your Business Plan (Mission/Vision/P&L)

4.      The Business Plan must be tied to the owners vision and goals.

As an owner your vision and communicated targets are the backbone of any and all marketing success.

As Paul Harvey so eloquently said, "and now you know the rest of the story!"