There are many ways to waste money on marketing as a business.
Having worked with hundreds of business owners over the last 10 years, we’ve heard it all. In almost every case a client has wasted their time, energy, or money on marketing, it was ultimately due to one of the following two reasons:
1. Bad Marketing
When we talk “marketing,” we’re referring to any and all efforts that generate leads for your business, including PR, branding, and advertising. We’ve worked with many businesses that generate a significant number of leads, but these leads don’t ultimately become customers or clients. They’re not the right type of leads for their business.
Other clients have the opposite problem and invest in marketing campaigns that don’t generate any leads at all. In either scenario, it could be that the target market or audience wasn’t well defined, the messaging was off point, they weren’t using the right channels… whatever the reason, ultimately the marketing campaign did not do its job.
2. Bad Sales Processes
You could have the most qualified leads delivered to you on a silver platter, but it won’t matter if you don’t have the right intake or follow-up process to convert those leads into paying customers and clients. In this scenario, marketing can carry the ball into the red zone, but sales must take it into the end zone to score.
This is why marketing companies pay us at SalesPartners to work with their clients. The marketing agency knows they’re doing good work and generating qualified leads, but the client isn’t converting those leads to generate a sufficient return. The marketing contract is in jeopardy because the client isn’t seeing results, but it’s not the fault of the agency.
What is your marketing problem?
Are you wasting your money generating the wrong type of leads (or none at all)? Or are your leads “falling through the cracks” of your sales process?
These are the two extremes you want to avoid in order to optimize your marketing dollars. The next time you invest in marketing but aren’t seeing results, take a closer look to identify which of these scenarios might be to blame. If you’d like to prevent wasting your marketing dollars, send us a message to learn more about how we can help.
