Bombs Gone Wrong (Part 1)

On Tuesday, I wrote about marketing tactics, using the metaphors "farms" for slow growth long-term tactics, and "bombs" for short-term high-impact lead generation tactics.

I love the smell of marketing in the morning.

A bomb tactic will generate a lot of leads or attention or revenue, but the impact is very short-term. This would include promotions, events, sales, grand openings, coupons, sweepstakes, giveaways - anything that makes a big noise but has very little ongoing effect after the fact.

Setting off a marketing bomb is awesome and fun, but done poorly, it can be very bad news.  Setting one off the wrong way can at best waste your money, and at worst, damage your business (sometimes irrevocably).

Here's some examples of bombs going wrong.

Follow-Up Failure

You bought a booth at that big, well-attended, high-visibility expo.  You gave out a tons of stuff, collected a lot of leads, talked to a lot of great people, and got a lot of attention.  You just really had an awesome show...

... and then you just dropped the ball, as you did not plan time and process after the event to follow up and close with the leads.  Eventually, you might have gotten around to it weeks or months later, but by that time, it's no use, the "halo" of your event is now gone and those leads are now stone cold.

I'd bet this is the number one mistake we make with this kind of tactic - the lack of adequate follow-up.

When you set off a marketing bomb like an event, you MUST have a follow-up plan in place.  If you have to do it yourself, clear time in your schedule and put a process in place.

If you don't follow up, don't waste your time and money with the event.

Coupon Collapse

Or let's say you decide to send coupons out to drive business during a specific period.  Awesome, you have a huge uptick in leads, trials or sales during the coupon redemption period.

The coupon equivalent of the unmarked bill.

You didn't have in place a way to measure redemptions associated to sales nor did you plan out time after the redemption period to do this analysis.  So you're not really sure, objectively, what your margin erosion on sales associated to those coupons was nor what lift you may have had vs. a non-coupon redemption period.

Also, you decided to saturate the community with these coupons - and now, you've given away tons of margin without any way to follow up with the individuals who redeemed the coupons.

You've got to track what any tactic does for you!  You've got to have a way to follow up with customers!  Without that, you are just giving money away.

I'll continue expounding on this in Part 2 on Tuesday.

Need help with the issues I bring up here?  That's right up my alley!  Let me help - contact me today or leave a comment below!

Farming, Demolition, and You

When you "do" marketing, do you ever get frustrated when it takes a lot longer than you'd like?  Or how about the opposite problem - you do something that takes off so quick, it's hard to keep up?

Coming soon:  a fresh crop o' sales leads.

That's because marketing tactics (basically) fall into two categories.

Some tactics take a long time and lots of work to start generating leads, but when they do, they keep bearing fruit as long as you maintain and monitor them.  These tactics are "farms".

Others are quick hits for a big spike in business, but have little to no "tail" afterward, like a bomb going off.  These will generate a lot of leads quickly, but can't be maintained to continue producing leads (they must be replaced with a new campaign).  These tactics are "demolition".

Farming tactics include:

• SEO and web sites
• Leads Referral Marketing
• Content marketing

Demolition tactics include:

• Events
• Discounts, coupons and "sales"
• Sweepstakes, contests and promotions

A good marketing plan will include both categories of tactics, strategically placed in your marketing calendar, with the right measures and expectations in place.

Got any stories of the results of bombs or farms in your marketing plan?  I'd love to hear about it!

Sick of it All

Insert witty comment here while I take a nap.

This is not the post I was going to make today.

Instead, I'm on day two of a pretty nasty bug I've picked up.

I made the decision to stay home and get better quickly, rather than push it and make myself sick longer (I find, as a I age, this is definitely the wiser thing to do).  I also wanted to avoid spreading whatever I have.

On the one hand, I'm lucky - I don't have a boss to try to convince I'm sick enough to stay home.

On the other hand, it's seriously impacting my business, and there really isn't anything I can do about it, as I am a one-man shop, and there's only me - nobody will cover me.

Automation tools have helped my online presence, at least, and I can keep doing a lot of that at home, but I'm a very hyper-localized business, and I need to be out and about seeing folks in order to generate billable hours.

So I have a question for you - what do you do when you're sick in your small business?  Let me know!

Burn Your Money

Mmm, tasty marketing fail.

Do it.

Put it in a pile and set it on fire.

I'm not kidding.  Well, kind of not kidding.

You are setting fire to your hard-earned cash when you engage in marketing tactics without a plan in place.  The big advantage of the burn-your-money school of marketing planning is at least you get a tasty toasted marshmallow in the process.

You see, it's very common for small businesses to do this - jump straight to tactics without any clear goals in mind.  It's easy to do - tactics take up most of the discussion in the marketing world.

But without a plan, you end up with no consistent brand position, different messages in different channels, no consistent idea of who you're talking to or why... it becomes a huge exercise in mystery and frustration and chaos.

It's no wonder so many of us get so irritated with marketing!

This is so easily fixed!

Simply take the time to sit down, evaluate who your target audience is, how you can serve them, how you can solve their problems, and what they need to know about you.  Articulate the "why" (why customers should choose you) before you go to the "how" (what you will say and where you'll say it).

The rest of the planning process is a lot easier and far less stressful once you do this.

And you won't be burning your money any longer!

Psst, I can help you with this, if you need a little guidance - drop me a note!