Most marketing failures are not channel problems. They are business problems that show up in the marketing numbers. Here are five reasons marketing stops working and what to do about each.
Reason 1: expecting fast results
Everyone wants results yesterday, or at the latest today. Companies launch marketing and expect revenue to jump five or ten times by tomorrow.
The pressure is understandable: a difficult economy and rising competition in almost every sector squeeze margins. Businesses reach for tools that pay off right now and ignore the ones that take longer.
Why buyers don't purchase immediately
One trend has become obvious over the years: it is harder every year to make a customer buy straight from an ad. People research the market, read reviews and look for companies that share their worldview. Large fashion brands caught this trend first. Through their own products and content they paint a picture their potential customers want to belong to. People see those images, try them on and start spending.
Brands invest in marketing and visual identity because they understand: potential customers need time to decide and pay.
How to combine fast and slow sales
Work on two fronts at once.
- Clients here and now. For product businesses this can be tenders and public procurement, or capturing high-intent demand in search.
- A foundation for future sales. SEO is a good example: you create content once, optimise it for key queries and get traffic, leads and clients from that page for several years. Video works the same way: you publish a clip, optimise it for search queries and get results over a long period. Community building on social media belongs here too.
Your customers need time to decide to work with you. Don't write off slower traffic channels and have a little patience.
Reason 2: no long-term strategy
This is closely tied to the first reason. Companies chase immediate results precisely because they have no long-term strategy or planning. Ask yourself right now: does your company have goals for the next year, three years, five years?
There is a saying everyone knows and agrees with but few apply: no wind is favourable for a ship that doesn't know where it is going. Without a goal, a company cannot succeed.
You may object: how can you plan five years ahead when the situation changes daily? That is exactly when a long-term strategy matters. It lets you steer the company and get through the hardest moments.
Crisis lessons and a guiding star
During the global crisis millions of companies closed. Talking to their founders in consultations, one thing united them all: no long-term strategy. With one, they would at least have understood that they had time to recover and rebuild. Crises are temporary, and experienced investors will confirm that even the steepest fall is followed by growth. Over the long term the economy grows, companies grow and profits grow.
Define the biggest goal you will pursue for 5, 10 or even 20 years. That is your guiding star, and aiming at it helps you survive any crisis.
Reason 3: the customer doesn't see the value
If your product doesn't hook the buyer, doesn't stir any emotion and doesn't make clear how it solves their problem, nothing will help. The key point: you failed to show how you help the person through your product. If you can't do that, no discount will make them buy.
For the same reason we rarely discount our services. We know the level of value we deliver and that it is worth far more than we charge. We would rather invest in raising that value, in the product and in operational excellence, than cut our margin and earn less.
Understand what matters to your buyers and which problem they want to solve by buying your product.
Reason 4: too small an ad budget
This is common in small businesses. Companies don't grow because they don't invest in marketing, or invest negligible amounts.
One story changed my thinking. Some time ago our agency handled promotion for the webinars of a large education company. What surprised me was the scale: they bought traffic on an industrial scale. It was a real shift in how I thought about scale. That company was talked about everywhere, and even our clients in Europe knew it when we mentioned we had worked with them.
Think about the reach that implies. Reach is simply the volume of effectively spent ad budget a company can invest in its marketing. So don't skimp on marketing, if you want to grow and scale.
Reason 5: not understanding your business economics
Owners and top managers who don't calculate their company's economics cannot manage it effectively.
Imagine flying a plane, not a modern one but a very old model with no instruments or gauges. You judge altitude by the height of the trees and bushes, and speed by the wind hitting your face. Not a great picture, is it? That is business without metrics: you keep clipping the trees, getting whipped by branches and stalling on every takeoff attempt.
Knowing which metrics to track is a cornerstone of success for any company.
What to do
For marketing to work: be patient, set a long-term goal, communicate the value of your product, don't skimp on the ad budget and calculate your business economics. These five reasons are not a verdict, they are growth points for your company.
