Why Your Marketing Strategy Isn’t Working

dog-doggo.gif

This one formula will help you pinpoint shortcomings in your marketing strategy

When results from marketing aren’t coming in, it’s clear. We’re not seeing engagement on content, leads are elusive, and growth is stagnating.

Figuring out what needs to shift can be much more frustrating. Marketing programs these days are an intricate web of strategies and tactics. It’s increasingly harder to pinpoint what to optimize.

One way is to return to square one. Here’s what we mean by that. Most marketing strategists will get a rough forecast on sales impact using a formula that looks something like this:

AUDIENCE SIZE
X
AVERAGE UNIQUE CLICK RATE
X
MARKETING CONVERSION RATE
X
SALES CLOSE RATE
=
NEW CLIENTS

It’s a rough science, and of course benchmarks vary by industry and product. For example, enterprise tech may have much lower marketing conversion and sales close rates, but tremendous upside in profit on closed deals. But, let’s throw in some rough numbers:

AUDIENCE SIZE
X
5% AVERAGE UNIQUE CLICK RATE
X
2.5% MARKETING CONVERSION RATE
X
10% SALES CLOSE RATE
=
NEW CLIENTS

If you’re reaching an audience of around 10,000 prospects, theoretically you should be seeing 1-2 new sales (10,000 prospects = 500 clicks = 12 Leads = 1-2 new clients).

This one formula will help you pinpoint shortcomings in your marketing strategy

So, where are the results?

By reverse-engineering each component of this formula, we can often get a better understanding of what needs to get adjusted in our marketing strategy. Here are questions to consider:

AUDIENCE SIZE

  • Are you simply not getting in front of enough people?
  • How big is your internal database (i.e. email list)?
  • What does your paid reach look like?
  • If it’s relevant for your industry, what sort of search engine visibility do you have?

AVERAGE UNIQUE CLICK RATE

  • Is your brand messaging on point? (More on this here!)
  • Are you consistently executing on marketing tactics?
  • Are you targeting the right audience?
  • Are we generating base awareness by making repeat impressions on unique users?

MARKETING CONVERSION RATE 

  • Is your content compelling enough?
  • Is your call-to-action relevant for your target audience?
  • Have you created a sense of urgency?
  • Are you giving prospects options for how to access your content, e.g. webinars, blog posts, long form pieces, etc.?
  • Have we not created enough awareness before asking for the conversion?

SALES CLOSE RATE

  • Is the marketing-to-sales handoff happening at the right time?
  • Has your brand messaging carried over into sales presentations?

Instead of grasping in the dark, asking “where did we go wrong?” you can break down a big, very important question into bite-sized pieces that are specific and actionable. And, as the super savvy marketers we are, we love specific and actionable.

Need some guidance in auditing your marketing program? Let’s chat. At NetStrategies, we use a “teach a man to fish” approach, which means we can coach you through evaluating your marketing program and setting the stage for years of growth.