5 Marketing Mistakes Wasting Your Money
It’s always important for any buiness owner to take a step back and analyze every expense and find places to optimize and reduce waste. Even in good economic times we all should be doing this, but in times like these, it can mean the difference between surviving these couple of rough months or going out of buinsess. Let’s look at 5 ways your marketing budget is wasting your money to see where we can eliminate waste at every level.
1. A lack of planning
Today’s marketing landscape is a full of shiny objects and distractions. With an ever-growing lineup of social media apps you just “have to be on”, an increased emphasis on search engine marketing and more ways for your customers to find you than ever, it’s tempting to try and do it all. But without a holistic plan that encompasses the channels your customers are actually using to make purchasing decisions, you’ll likely end up with a long list of one-off marketing efforts that don’t tie together or support the buyer journey that’s going to be most profitable to your business.
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin
To gather, nurture and eventually convert the most qualified leads, a strategic marketing plan is key. When you’ve got multiple marketing campaigns running in multiple channels, gathering data into exactly when, how and where your customers found out about your business, and when they took the next steps to discover more about what you have to offer. In turn, your sales and marketing teams know which campaigns are the most successful—empowering them to better spend your marketing dollars with more strategic planning to target your customers in the most efficient, profitable way.
2. Not getting to know your customers
How can you give your customers what they want if you don’t know who they are? As a marketer, the onus is on you to get to know what they like and don’t like, how they shop, where they do their research and what digital channels they trust the most. Once you understand your customers needs, where they’re most comfortable researching, engaging with and contacting your business, you’ll be able to build deeper relationships with them through targeted marketing efforts that help them solve their unique problems.
If you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one.
3. Not getting the most out of your customer data
Data is the marketing world’s most valuable resource. The collection of prospect and customer information is how the most successful businesses are able to offer their customers exactly what they want when they want it, through tailored advertising that reaches consumers on the channels they prefer most. If you’ve ever bought something after seeing an ad on Facebook, an email offer that landed in your inbox or a coupon code you received in the mail, you were on the receiving end of data-driven marketing.
Call tracking enables this kind of data-driven marketing by collecting information about each customer’s touchpoints along the buyer journey across all of your marketing channels. By placing unique contact information for each touchpoint along their journey, you’ll know exactly which marketing methods are converting your prospects into customers. Now that you’ve gotten to know your customers a little better and have the data to reach them where it matters most, you can start to identify patterns in their shopping behavior to deliver the same types of targeting marketing that inspire you to buy.
4. Misunderstanding the buyer journey
If you don’t know which marketing channels are converting your prospects into leads, there’s a good chance you’re wasting money month after month. Asking a new customer “how did you hear about us?” is not a reliable method of data collection—because that customer may not recall which ad, in which channel, at what time prompted them to contact you. When your customer is the only source of information you have to understand the buyer journey, it’s likely your data set is more than a little skewed.
Call tracking software allows you to see each customer’s actual moment of decision to contact your business. These solutions collect data about which marketing campaigns your customers are exposed to—so whether they searched for businesses like yours on Google, saw your ad on social media or passed one of your billboards, call tracking will give you insight into which marketing dollars made the final push for them to get in touch.
5. Doing exactly what your competition is doing
With so many options and the power to shop right from the supercomputers in their pockets, today’s consumers are comparing way more than just price. Shoppers are savvier than ever, and with unlimited researching power, they want to know as much as they can about what you have to offer before making a decision with their dollars. Customers are looking for what makes you different, and if your marketing strategy mirrors that of your competitors, they’ll take the path of least resistance to buy (which usually means the lowest price). With call tracking in place to discover how, when and where your customers engage with your business, you’ll be able to invest more time and resources in those channels—giving you the edge to stand out from the competition and gain market share when and where your customers are making purchasing decisions.
