Questions to ask yourself if you think your marketing is not working

When we meet new or potential clients, we more often than not hear a list of marketing “things” that a firm has done, swiftly followed by the comment that “none of them worked”. We thought in the light of this we would share some questions to ask yourself if you find yourself in a similar position.

1. Are you sure that it did not work? Do you measure and track enquiries and sales and religiously ask where somebody heard of you and log it. If you have physical premises do you track footfall or have you reviewed your google analytics to see if there has been any impact i.e. a spike in visits or an increase in direct traffic if your marketing was offline.

2. By what measures are you evaluating the success? What had you expected to achieve and on what basis was this figure arrived at? Were your expectations reasonable and rational – say perhaps based upon past results?

3. Were you targeting the right customer? Have you defined your target audience and did the marketing you are reviewing reach that audience?

4. Was there an appropriate call to action? For Marketing to work it needs to take the potential customer through the four steps of AIDA (getting Attention, creating Interest and a Desire and then taking Action). If your marketing “only” took the potential customer through the first three of these steps there may be a residual benefit in that you have raised awareness.

5. Was there sufficient repetition? It is a big ask to expect one form of marketing to lead to a sale, when the recipient hasn’t heard of your business before.

This list is not exhaustive, but hopefully it has given you food for thought. If you would like us to explore this in some more detail with you, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Or alternatively you may find our page on Marketing Audits to be of interest.