The 10 Root Causes of Hit-or-Miss Marketing

We recently explored how to tell if you’re doing hit-or-miss marketing. We even shared a quick test to make it easy to determine if you (or some other unwitting folks at your company) are guilty of it. 

But discovering that you’re making a misstep is different than knowing why it’s happening. And like G.I. Joe famously said, “Knowing is half the battle.” 

That little bit of 80s nostalgia aside, we wanted to double back to discuss some common causes of hit-or-miss marketing. Hopefully, this not only provides more insight into how you should (and shouldn’t) be approaching your marketing but also serves as a starting point for how to begin fixing the problem. 

10 Reasons Why Companies Do Hit-or-Miss Marketing

Companies start engaging in hit-or-miss marketing for a lot of reasons. Below are the 10 most common root causes:

1. You don’t have a marketing strategy with specific elements – most importantly, a story that’s compelling, emotional, engaging and disruptive so that your business looks remarkable compared to the competition.
   
   In today’s crowded digital space, where the buyer journey spans multiple competitors and numerous channels and touchpoints, you need to stand out and be memorable. Otherwise, you risk being left out of the conversation.
   
   
2. You don’t have an agreed-on investment level that’s appropriately aligned with the expected results. This makes it difficult to feel like you’re getting the appropriate ROI, resulting in poor or shortsighted decisions.
   
   In short, if you’re expecting a million dollars in new revenue from a $5,000 investment in marketing, you’re probably going to be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean marketing didn’t work. It means you need to adjust your expectations, your budget or both. 
   
   
3. You don’t have the right set of tactics or the correct combination of tactics to generate the leads needed to hit your sales goals. This could mean you’re not doing enough or you’re doing the wrong things.
   
   For instance, you might be relying on blog posts to drive all your engagement when you should also be speaking at industry events and running ads in trade publications. 
   
   
4. You don’t have your tactics orchestrated into campaigns that deliver your story through multiple channels enough times and to the right people.
   
   Today, it’s unlikely that a single channel or touch will be enough to move buyers to purchase, especially in B2B where sales cycles are longer and more complex. You need to engage with your target audience across the channels they are active in and at every stage of the buyer journey.
   
   
5. You don’t have the right technology or it’s not configured properly to provide the analytics to uncover the insights required to create solid action plans that drive your marketing results up and to the right.
   
   
6. You don’t have the processes in place to effectively plan, execute and optimize your marketing quarter after quarter and year over year, making it challenging to get any real traction and build on it over time.
   
   
7. You don’t have the people, skills and expertise to do what today’s modern digital marketing requires to build, analyze and execute the correct tactics in the appropriate campaigns.
   
   Marketing has become increasingly complex, requiring specialized skills to keep up with the demands of prospects and the customer experience they expect.
   
   
8. You don’t have alignment between marketing and sales, which helps enable a seamless and remarkable experience throughout the buyer journey. This requires open communication and a regular feedback loop between sales and marketing.
   
   
9. You’re not leveraging current customers who already love you for referrals, references and reviews, nor are you marketing to them to cross-sell and upsell additional products and services.
   
   
10. You don’t have the right guidance. Or put another way, you simply don’t know what you don’t know and so you just do what you can.
    
    That’s not necessarily your fault since, as you can see from this list, effective marketing demands a complex set of simultaneous activities that require a deep skill set and careful orchestration. If you lack the experience to figure it out, you’ll be stumbling through the forest without a map.

These Issues Are Fixable

All the above issues are easily fixed through process, methodology, frameworks and experience. Some can be quickly addressed in-house, especially if only one or two are impacting your company. For instance, you may have the ability to create a compelling message or the awareness to better align your expectations to your investment level. 

However, the more issues affecting your marketing, the more complexity there will be in addressing them, and the more likely you’ll need an experienced partner to help.