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Most marketing fails before it starts — here’s how to fix it

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How to establish a new martech role

Most marketing fails, and often before it even starts.

Marketing is pivotal to the success of every business. If your marketing fails, the business will follow suit. Ensuring the success of your marketing must be the absolute highest priority of any business. Far too often, however, it’s disregarded and completely overlooked.

When marketing fails

Given that marketing organizations have notoriously limited resources, both restrictive budgets and small teams, there is no room for failure. Marketing is a mission-critical function. Forget fluffy KPIs, witty taglines and artistic imagery. Delivering revenue and results is all that matters. 

Not surprisingly, there are a handful of consistent reasons why most marketing is doomed for failure even before it starts. Understanding these root causes will help you become a better marketer, prevent fighting a losing battle, and guarantee the success of your marketing.

Top 5 reasons marketing fails before it starts

Here are some of the top reasons marketing fails from the beginning. You most likely will recognize one or more of these from your past experience or present situation.

Unrealistic expectations

Despite a lack of budget, time, skills, or experience, most marketers overestimate the success of any campaign and believe that it will generate record-breaking results, even if it’s something they’ve never done before.

Forecasting and projecting are both areas where marketers notoriously struggle, either in ignoring to consider them or creating them with no basis in reality, account of past performance, or consideration of potential risks.

Unrealistic expectations don’t exist solely within the four walls of the marketing organization, however. Management and other functions, like sales, often have assumptions about the effectiveness of marketing. Understanding these expectations — and setting realistic ones — is key to success in marketing.

Lack of focus

The biggest reason that marketing efforts fail is a lack of focus. Most marketing teams are either far too ambitious or fail to push back when being pulled in many directions. Trying to do too much, especially with too few resources, is a recipe for disaster. Jerry Weinberg refers to this as the “Law of Raspberry Jam”: the more you spread it, the thinner it gets.

Doing less creates more results. It’s imperative that every marketing initiative has full support to maximize its impact and chance of success. I’ve written before about the need for ruthless prioritization in marketing and there are so many benefits accrued from a narrow focus. Not only is it easier to get results, it’s also easier to measure and manage.

Weak support

Marketing can’t succeed without the requisite support. Great marketing requires a skilled team, sufficient budget, and a realistic timeframe, among other needs. 

Many marketing teams are underfunded and lack budget to execute on the demands placed before them. Other marketing teams are stretched too thin given the limited headcount.

Regardless of the reasons — and there are a multitude — marketing can’t operate in isolation. 

Focused on the 2%

Results often don’t happen immediately, a fact that makes marketing hard to quantify. Typical conversion rates for most marketing fall around 2%, which means that 98% of prospects won’t convert right away. That’s fine as long as you’re expecting this and can nurture those prospects accordingly. However, despite this universal truth, most marketers fail to plan or develop the nurturing required to realize the true results of their efforts and investments.

Additionally, measuring only the immediate impact fails to account for the true impact that marketing generates. Success in marketing isn’t just about instant gratification, it’s also about long-term growth.

Excessive or nonexistent planning

There are two camps marketing teams fall into when it comes to planning: excessive planning and nonexistent planning. The former maps out too many details and restricts the ability to iterate and optimize in flight, an essential ingredient of successful marketing. The latter is more common, where teams simply figure it out as they go and bet on serendipity and hope for success.

Neither approach is a tenet of successful marketing. Planning must be done and plans should outline the what, but not the how, in order to provide room for optimizing, adjusting and iterating, to maximize the chances of success.

5 rules for successful marketing

Now that you know some of the main reasons why marketing fails before it starts, let’s address these issues head on. Here are five principles to ensure your marketing succeeds every time.

Define success

It’s been said that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. If you want to be successful it helps to first define what success looks like. 

How will we be better off at the completion of this campaign or initiative? 

How will the organization be closer to achieving their goals as a result?

Work backwards from your answer to identify the critical elements and ignore everything else. The more clearly you can define success the easier it will be to separate the essential from the nonessential.

Do less

The key to more results is doing less. Focus is one of the most powerful elements of marketing, and the more focused you can be the easier it will be to execute, manage and measure your impact. 

Focus requires prioritization, which is a challenge for most marketing organizations. I’ve written about the need for marketing teams to prioritize ruthlessly which in today’s increasingly complex landscape is more important than ever before.

Focus and prioritization are fundamental at the strategic level. On the tactical level, testing and validating are the most efficient and effective ways to maximize results with the minimum resources. Testing is a marketer’s most powerful tool, and it enables you to get more results by doing less.

Read next: Why testing is a marketer’s most powerful tool

Reuse & recycle

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel and yet marketers love to do just that. Stop creating the new, and reuse — or repurpose — existing content, assets, plans and more. Too often we chase innovation for the sake of something new when repeating what worked in the past is easier and more certain. New is the enemy of good.

One of the biggest mistakes in marketing is achieving great success and then moving onto something new and different instead of repeating what has already been proven to work.

Before launching any marketing initiative, take an inventory of what existing materials and assets you have that can be reused or repurposed to save time, money, and effort. 

Align & synergize

Success in marketing is a team effort that requires alignment, synchronization and synergy. You must help your team get on the same page to understand the mission and row in the same direction. Imagine chaperoning a tour group and having stragglers who keep getting stuck behind, get lost and confused, or go down their own path. It’s your job to keep everyone on the team charging full-speed ahead towards the destination in lockstep. Keeping everyone aligned and moving together requires a clear mission, shared goals, and continuous accountability.

The same is true organizationally, outside of your team. Marketing must communicate and collaborate with sales and senior leadership to express the needs, direction, and gain support. The success of the marketing function is directly correlated with how connected and aligned it is within the organization.

Have a process

Marketing is neither an art or a science; it’s a process. Treating marketing as an event that happens and then is over is the wrong way to think about marketing. The process of marketing never ends and therefore we must design and execute marketing with this in mind. 

Every marketing initiative must consider what happens both during and after: optimization and nurturing. Any effort that doesn’t allow for both of these will always produce a subpar result.

The key to marketing success

Marketing is filled with challenges, some of which cause it to fail before it even starts. Fortunately, these causes are known and preventable. If we want marketing to deliver revenue and results then it’s imperative that each of these causes be taken seriously. Raise these issues internally and create conversation to acknowledge and address them. Accepting the status quo is not an option. 

Likewise, remember and apply these principles to significantly increase the likelihood of success for your marketing initiatives. These principles are timeless and universally applicable no matter the type of marketing activities involved. Even embracing just one of these principles can have a positive impact on your team, your effectiveness, and the success of your marketing.


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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Tim Parkin is a consultant, advisor, and coach to marketing executives globally. He specializes in helping marketing teams optimize performance, accelerate growth, and maximize their results.
By applying more than 20 years of experience merging behavioral psychology and technology, Tim has unlocked rapid and dramatic growth for global brands and award-winning agencies alike.
He is a speaker, author, and thought leader who has been featured in AdAge, AdWeek, Inc, TechCrunch, Forbes, and many other major industry publications. Tim is also a member of the American Marketing Association, Society for the Advancement of Consulting, and an inductee to the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame.

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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

Introduce your processes: If you’ve streamlined a particular process, share it. It could be the solution someone else is looking for.

Jump on trends and news: If there’s a hot topic or emerging trend, offer your unique perspective.

Share industry insights: Attended a webinar or podcast that offered valuable insights. Summarize the key takeaways and how they can be applied.

Share your successes: Write about strategies that have worked exceptionally well for you. Your audience will appreciate the proven advice. For example, I shared the process I used to help a former client rank for a keyword with over 2.2 million monthly searches.

Question outdated strategies: If you see a strategy that’s losing steam, suggest alternatives based on your experience and data.

5. Establish communication channels (How)

Once you know who your audience is and what they want to hear, the next step is figuring out how to reach them. Here’s how:

Choose the right platforms: You don’t need to have a presence on every social media platform. Pick two platforms where your audience hangs out and create content for that platform. For example, I’m active on LinkedIn and X because my target audience (SEOs, B2B SaaS, and marketers) is active on these platforms.

Repurpose content: Don’t limit yourself to just one type of content. Consider repurposing your content on Quora, Reddit, or even in webinars and podcasts. This increases your reach and reinforces your message.

Follow Your audience: Go where your audience goes. If they’re active on X, that’s where you should be posting. If they frequent industry webinars, consider becoming a guest on these webinars.

Daily vs. In-depth content: Balance is key. Use social media for daily tips and insights, and reserve your blog for more comprehensive guides and articles.

Network with influencers: Your audience is likely following other experts in the field. Engaging with these influencers puts your content in front of a like-minded audience. I try to spend 30 minutes to an hour daily engaging with content on X and LinkedIn. This is the best way to build a relationship so you’re not a complete stranger when you DM privately.

6. Think of thought leadership as part of your content marketing efforts

As with other content efforts, thought leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It thrives when woven into a cohesive content marketing strategy. By aligning individual authority with your brand, you amplify the credibility of both.

Think of it as top-of-the-funnel content to:

  • Build awareness about your brand

  • Highlight the problems you solve

  • Demonstrate expertise by platforming experts within the company who deliver solutions

Consider the user journey. An individual enters at the top through a social media post, podcast, or blog post. Intrigued, they want to learn more about you and either search your name on Google or social media. If they like what they see, they might visit your website, and if the information fits their needs, they move from passive readers to active prospects in your sales pipeline.

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

Collecting high-quality data is crucial to making strategic observations about your customers. Researchers have to consider the best ways to design their surveys and then how to increase survey completion, because it makes the data more reliable.

→ Free Download: 5 Customer Survey Templates [Access Now]

I’m going to explain how survey completion plays into the reliability of data. Then, we’ll get into how to calculate your survey completion rate versus the number of questions you ask. Finally, I’ll offer some tips to help you increase survey completion rates.

My goal is to make your data-driven decisions more accurate and effective. And just for fun, I’ll use cats in the examples because mine won’t stop walking across my keyboard.

Why Measure Survey Completion

Let’s set the scene: We’re inside a laboratory with a group of cat researchers. They’re wearing little white coats and goggles — and they desperately want to know what other cats think of various fish.

They’ve written up a 10-question survey and invited 100 cats from all socioeconomic rungs — rough and hungry alley cats all the way up to the ones that thrice daily enjoy their Fancy Feast from a crystal dish.

Now, survey completion rates are measured with two metrics: response rate and completion rate. Combining those metrics determines what percentage, out of all 100 cats, finished the entire survey. If all 100 give their full report on how delicious fish is, you’d achieve 100% survey completion and know that your information is as accurate as possible.

But the truth is, nobody achieves 100% survey completion, not even golden retrievers.

With this in mind, here’s how it plays out:

  • Let’s say 10 cats never show up for the survey because they were sleeping.
  • Of the 90 cats that started the survey, only 25 got through a few questions. Then, they wandered off to knock over drinks.
  • Thus, 90 cats gave some level of response, and 65 completed the survey (90 – 25 = 65).
  • Unfortunately, those 25 cats who only partially completed the survey had important opinions — they like salmon way more than any other fish.

The cat researchers achieved 72% survey completion (65 divided by 90), but their survey will not reflect the 25% of cats — a full quarter! — that vastly prefer salmon. (The other 65 cats had no statistically significant preference, by the way. They just wanted to eat whatever fish they saw.)

Now, the Kitty Committee reviews the research and decides, well, if they like any old fish they see, then offer the least expensive ones so they get the highest profit margin.

CatCorp, their competitors, ran the same survey; however, they offered all 100 participants their own glass of water to knock over — with a fish inside, even!

Only 10 of their 100 cats started, but did not finish the survey. And the same 10 lazy cats from the other survey didn’t show up to this one, either.

So, there were 90 respondents and 80 completed surveys. CatCorp achieved an 88% completion rate (80 divided by 90), which recorded that most cats don’t care, but some really want salmon. CatCorp made salmon available and enjoyed higher profits than the Kitty Committee.

So you see, the higher your survey completion rates, the more reliable your data is. From there, you can make solid, data-driven decisions that are more accurate and effective. That’s the goal.

We measure the completion rates to be able to say, “Here’s how sure we can feel that this information is accurate.”

And if there’s a Maine Coon tycoon looking to invest, will they be more likely to do business with a cat food company whose decision-making metrics are 72% accurate or 88%? I suppose it could depend on who’s serving salmon.

While math was not my strongest subject in school, I had the great opportunity to take several college-level research and statistics classes, and the software we used did the math for us. That’s why I used 100 cats — to keep the math easy so we could focus on the importance of building reliable data.

Now, we’re going to talk equations and use more realistic numbers. Here’s the formula:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

So, we need to take the number of completed surveys and divide that by the number of people who responded to at least one of your survey questions. Even just one question answered qualifies them as a respondent (versus nonrespondent, i.e., the 10 lazy cats who never show up).

Now, you’re running an email survey for, let’s say, Patton Avenue Pet Company. We’ll guess that the email list has 5,000 unique addresses to contact. You send out your survey to all of them.

Your analytics data reports that 3,000 people responded to one or more of your survey questions. Then, 1,200 of those respondents actually completed the entire survey.

3,000/5000 = 0.6 = 60% — that’s your pool of survey respondents who answered at least one question. That sounds pretty good! But some of them didn’t finish the survey. You need to know the percentage of people who completed the entire survey. So here we go:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

Completion rate = (1,200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Voila, 40% of your respondents did the entire survey.

Response Rate vs. Completion Rate

Okay, so we know why the completion rate matters and how we find the right number. But did you also hear the term response rate? They are completely different figures based on separate equations, and I’ll show them side by side to highlight the differences.

  • Completion Rate = # of Completed Surveys divided by # of Respondents
  • Response Rate = # of Respondents divided by Total # of surveys sent out

Here are examples using the same numbers from above:

Completion Rate = (1200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Response Rate = (3,000/5000) = 0.60 = 60%

So, they are different figures that describe different things:

  • Completion rate: The percentage of your respondents that completed the entire survey. As a result, it indicates how sure we are that the information we have is accurate.
  • Response rate: The percentage of people who responded in any way to our survey questions.

The follow-up question is: How can we make this number as high as possible in order to be closer to a truer and more complete data set from the population we surveyed?

There’s more to learn about response rates and how to bump them up as high as you can, but we’re going to keep trucking with completion rates!

What’s a good survey completion rate?

That is a heavily loaded question. People in our industry have to say, “It depends,” far more than anybody wants to hear it, but it depends. Sorry about that.

There are lots of factors at play, such as what kind of survey you’re doing, what industry you’re doing it in, if it’s an internal or external survey, the population or sample size, the confidence level you’d like to hit, the margin of error you’re willing to accept, etc.

But you can’t really get a high completion rate unless you increase response rates first.

So instead of focusing on what’s a good completion rate, I think it’s more important to understand what makes a good response rate. Aim high enough, and survey completions should follow.

I checked in with the Qualtrics community and found this discussion about survey response rates:

“Just wondering what are the average response rates we see for online B2B CX surveys? […]

Current response rates: 6%–8%… We are looking at boosting the response rates but would first like to understand what is the average.”

The best answer came from a government service provider that works with businesses. The poster notes that their service is free to use, so they get very high response rates.

“I would say around 30–40% response rates to transactional surveys,” they write. “Our annual pulse survey usually sits closer to 12%. I think the type of survey and how long it has been since you rendered services is a huge factor.”

Since this conversation, “Delighted” (the Qualtrics blog) reported some fresher data:

survey completion rate vs number of questions new data, qualtrics data

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The takeaway here is that response rates vary widely depending on the channel you use to reach respondents. On the upper end, the Qualtrics blog reports that customers had 85% response rates for employee email NPS surveys and 33% for email NPS surveys.

A good response rate, the blog writes, “ranges between 5% and 30%. An excellent response rate is 50% or higher.”

This echoes reports from Customer Thermometer, which marks a response rate of 50% or higher as excellent. Response rates between 5%-30% are much more typical, the report notes. High response rates are driven by a strong motivation to complete the survey or a personal relationship between the brand and the customer.

If your business does little person-to-person contact, you’re out of luck. Customer Thermometer says you should expect responses on the lower end of the scale. The same goes for surveys distributed from unknown senders, which typically yield the lowest level of responses.

According to SurveyMonkey, surveys where the sender has no prior relationship have response rates of 20% to 30% on the high end.

Whatever numbers you do get, keep making those efforts to bring response rates up. That way, you have a better chance of increasing your survey completion rate. How, you ask?

Tips to Increase Survey Completion

If you want to boost survey completions among your customers, try the following tips.

1. Keep your survey brief.

We shouldn’t cram lots of questions into one survey, even if it’s tempting. Sure, it’d be nice to have more data points, but random people will probably not hunker down for 100 questions when we catch them during their half-hour lunch break.

Keep it short. Pare it down in any way you can.

Survey completion rate versus number of questions is a correlative relationship — the more questions you ask, the fewer people will answer them all. If you have the budget to pay the respondents, it’s a different story — to a degree.

“If you’re paying for survey responses, you’re more likely to get completions of a decently-sized survey. You’ll just want to avoid survey lengths that might tire, confuse, or frustrate the user. You’ll want to aim for quality over quantity,” says Pamela Bump, Head of Content Growth at HubSpot.

2. Give your customers an incentive.

For instance, if they’re cats, you could give them a glass of water with a fish inside.

Offer incentives that make sense for your target audience. If they feel like they are being rewarded for giving their time, they will have more motivation to complete the survey.

This can even accomplish two things at once — if you offer promo codes, discounts on products, or free shipping, it encourages them to shop with you again.

3. Keep it smooth and easy.

Keep your survey easy to read. Simplifying your questions has at least two benefits: People will understand the question better and give you the information you need, and people won’t get confused or frustrated and just leave the survey.

4. Know your customers and how to meet them where they are.

Here’s an anecdote about understanding your customers and learning how best to meet them where they are.

Early on in her role, Pamela Bump, HubSpot’s Head of Content Growth, conducted a survey of HubSpot Blog readers to learn more about their expertise levels, interests, challenges, and opportunities. Once published, she shared the survey with the blog’s email subscribers and a top reader list she had developed, aiming to receive 150+ responses.

“When the 20-question survey was getting a low response rate, I realized that blog readers were on the blog to read — not to give feedback. I removed questions that wouldn’t serve actionable insights. When I reshared a shorter, 10-question survey, it passed 200 responses in one week,” Bump shares.

Tip 5. Gamify your survey.

Make it fun! Brands have started turning surveys into eye candy with entertaining interfaces so they’re enjoyable to interact with.

Your respondents could unlock micro incentives as they answer more questions. You can word your questions in a fun and exciting way so it feels more like a BuzzFeed quiz. Someone saw the opportunity to make surveys into entertainment, and your imagination — well, and your budget — is the limit!

Your Turn to Boost Survey Completion Rates

Now, it’s time to start surveying. Remember to keep your user at the heart of the experience. Value your respondents’ time, and they’re more likely to give you compelling information. Creating short, fun-to-take surveys can also boost your completion rates.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Take back your ROI by owning your data

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Treasure Data 800x450

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Other brands can copy your style, tone and strategy — but they can’t copy your data.

Your data is your competitive advantage in an environment where enterprises are working to grab market share by designing can’t-miss, always-on customer experiences. Your marketing tech stack enables those experiences. 

Join ActionIQ and Snowplow to learn the value of composing your stack – decoupling the data collection and activation layers to drive more intelligent targeting.

Register and attend “Maximizing Marketing ROI With a Composable Stack: Separating Reality from Fallacy,” presented by Snowplow and ActionIQ.


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About the author

Cynthia RamsaranCynthia Ramsaran

Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.

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