Every entrepreneur knows that marketing is crucial not only to making sales, but also to enhancing brand awareness. If you would like to sell products, for instance, then you know that you need to invest time in creating materials that will reach your target audience and hopefully convert them into paying customers. From there, you can establish your reputation as a trusted resource for what you’re selling, and the whole thing can potentially only get better.
The problem is, sometimes, as entrepreneurs, the line between the need for marketing and improper execution gets blurred. What do I mean by that? Well, I think that there comes a time when we may actually be harming our business goals and methodologies by doing too much marketing. If you are not sure whether you’re still on the right track and need a little guidance on vetting the directions you’re taking, here are three of the most important telltale signs that signify that your marketing may need a little tweaking.
When you are exhausting your resources without getting viable results
The first sign that you are doing too much marketing and not getting anything for it is when your financial and operational resources are starting to dwindle, without anything to show for it. Let’s say you have a monthly budget for marketing, and during the first few months of your campaign, you stuck by it. However, you hoped to enhance the results that you got from the campaign so you decided to double up. Fast forward to a few months after and you have totted up quite a total – not to mention increased the strain on your creative team – but the desired results did not come. This is one of the clearest scenarios where you may want to backtrack for a bit and check what went wrong.
When your materials are not influencing the right actions
Marketing materials and strategies have to target the right kind of people, and they should harness the functionality of efficient platforms that will help you reach your market. Sponsored social media ads, for instance, come equipped with tools that are designed to promote your offerings to your target audience. You can check how these posts are doing, of course, and from there, you can carefully customise your strategy as necessary.
However, seeing that your marketing efforts are reaching the right people and seeing that they have influenced them towards a closed sale are two different things. And one of the biggest reasons why this people aren’t buying is that you have saturated your brand with too many promotional materials, so much so that your potential clients have grown tired of the constant advertising. You must be consistent in reaching your target market, but you have to be careful to not overdo it and drive them away.
When you have jumped in on every new trend
Finally, there is the problem with adopting too many new trends, all at once. It cannot be denied that marketing – especially marketing that is meant for a digital audience – goes through various changes, and smart entrepreneurs know that going with the flow is necessary to staying afloat. However, there is no need to incorporate every new strategy into your marketing plan, especially if your previous methodologies have had positive results.
Why? Jumping in on every new trend in marketing will require your team to always be on some learning curve, dishing out trial-and-error tests to try and see what will work. As a result, you will have found that instead of boosting your outcomes and positively impacting your bottom line, you would have spread your resources too thin and missed out on what you should have focused on.
So if you spot these three signs in the way that you approach marketing, what can you do?
Consider these:
- Take an honest look at where your marketing strategies currently stand. If you’re doing too much marketing, the first thing that you should do to rectify the matter is to assess how effective your current marketing efforts really are. Be honest with the progress of your campaigns, take note of the glaring realisations that your data is offering up to you, and respond accordingly.
- Stick with what is working. It is also important to make sure that you keep on doing whatever is working. For instance, if your social media marketing has led to more brand recognition and successful sales, be consistent in doing the same methodologies. This will help you stay on track, rather than making detours that will only compromise your results.
Adapt as necessary and as merited. Similarly, if something has failed at getting the right results for a long time, then adjust your strategy. In such cases, considering alternative routes may be necessary. For example, if your article marketing has not led to more website visits, then you may want to look at improving the quality of your published content, or choosing other more effective platforms that can bring you readers that turn into customers.
