Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Not To Make
We all make mistakes; it’s part of being human. But don’t you love it when your friend shares the nitty-gritty details of some awful mistake they made to prevent you from falling into the same trap? Well, we want to be that friend.
Over the 15 years we’ve been doing digital marketing, we've seen many amazing triumphs. But we’ve also learned some tough lessons. In this blog, we’re going to share the top 10 mistakes that we’ve ever seen or, unfortunately, participated in to hopefully prevent you from experiencing the same pain we’ve experienced first-hand. And if you’ve already made these mistakes…you are in good company.
#1 Talking about leads without defining what leads are.
Leads—it’s all we marketers talk about—convert leads, nurture leads, and work leads. If you have experience in Salesforce.com, leads are your arch nemesis because you probably spend loads of time trying to explain how they are different from contacts to your sales partners.
We have seen on countless occasions the drama that can ensue from a poor definition of leads. All leads are not created equal. Subscribers, MQLs, and SQLs are not the same. If sales is asking for SQLs and marketing is delivering MQLs, there is bound to be a disconnect. In addition to being a different quality, SQLs are also much more expensive to collect than MQLs.
Spend time establishing what type of leads you are trying to attract and setting cost-per-lead (CPL) benchmarks so you can return to realistic budgets and campaign plans and keep the peace between sales and marketing.
#2 Making Big Decisions Without Data
If you’re still making decisions based on that “gut feeling”, you’re not alone, we see it all the time. The problem with gut decisions is that you can throw the baby out with the bathwater. For example, we’ve heard clients say “webinars aren’t a big revenue driver”. While webinars may not be the campaign getting ROI attribution when they look back to see each touch that happened with a prospect along the way they find out that webinars are key for adding new contacts to the database and as influencing campaigns.
When revenue goals aren’t being achieved we often see teams make an assumption about where their challenge is. Often the top of funnel lead generation is identified but often upon deeper data-driven investigation teams uncover other issues. Common culprits include:
Low conversion rates of leads to opportunities
Low conversion rates of demos to sales
Poor follow up on stalled sales opportunities or previously lost sales opportunities
Avoid making big pivots in strategy or guessing where funnel challenges exist without data to support your decisions. Use your CRM to track top of funnel lead generation, sales opportunities, closed-won deals, and campaign ROI attribution so you have the data you need to make informed decisions.
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#3 Neglecting Educational Content
Yes, we all have to promote products to drive sales. But people who are not yet ready for a sales conversation are looking for education to help them make buying decisions. Prospects are looking for your product long before you know about them. If you’re not providing educational content for them along their research journey, they may never reach out to you to learn about your product.
This is especially critical if your product is novel. Educational content can play a key role in building your database with MQLs that can be nurtured into SQLs. While educational content often does not get the ROI attribution, it plays a critical role in your buyer’s journey to purchase, so don’t let the ROI number tell the whole story with educational content.
#4 Skipping Paid Social
Whether your brand has a big or small media budget, social media is a place where companies of all sizes can play, but we see a startling number of brands skipping paid social altogether. We’ve seen paid social be incredibly good at driving subscribers and MQLs for companies seeking to grow email databases.
Still need convincing? Check out this case study that shows how we generated 11,551 leads from a social campaign (and still going today) for under $3 per lead.
#5 Sales and Marketing Misalignment
Sales and marketing teams can find themselves in conflict, despite having the same overarching goal–to drive sales. This can happen when there is poor visibility and accountability across sales and marketing organizations.
Properly optimized CRMs that provide transparency can easily solve this age-old problem:
Marketing is responsible for driving leads (Subscribers, MQLs, and SQLs). Create reports that break down leads, by quality, by campaign to create transparency.
Sales is responsible for converting high quality leads into opportunities. Create reports that show the conversion rate of leads by campaign to opportunities by campaign.
Sales is responsible for converting opportunities to sales. Create reports that show the conversion rates of opportunities to closed won deals.
These three reports enable sales to hold marketing accountable if lead gen, or lead quality is not meeting target benchmarks and enables sales leadership to identify where there are opportunities to improve conversion rates through the sales process.
This accountability circle enables sales and marketing to have productive and healthy conversations without finger pointing and creating a negative team culture.
#6 A One-And-Done Content Strategy
Creating content is a big lift on marketing teams. If your team is using content one time and moving on to the next thing you’re missing opportunities to maximize the life of your content. Repurpose content across different channels (email, social media, blogs, etc) and in different content formats (videos, infographics, articles, checklists, etc) to maximize reach and engagement.
Remember, we marketers get sick of our own content long before it’s played out in the market. Long format content offers a treasure trove of repackaging opportunities, don’t skip it.
Pro Tip: If you are not using a blog it’s a great place to house your repackage content formats. A blog creates an ideal destination to send people to from social media and email to engage with your education and continue on their product browsing journey. Blogs are also good for SEO and give you a place to publish your own thought leadership article (just like the one you are reading right now).
#7 Thinking “I’m Too Busy to Automate Things”
Have you ever said, “I know there is an easier way to do this task via automation, but it only takes me 15 minutes to do the manual work, so I’ll keep doing it that way.” It’s okay; you can be honest. We’ve all done it.
Sure, automation may require an initial time investment, but you will save significant effort in the long term. Automation isn’t just about sending automated email sequences. Automation can be used to assign tasks to teammates, assign leads to sales, perform data updates on contact records based on prospect behaviors, score and grade leads, and the list goes on.
#8 Thinking Facebook is Dead
Yes, platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok are hip, they’re exciting, they’re causing a lot of buzz. But as of today Facebook is still the most popular social media platform by user count. So we’re not saying ignore Instagram or TikTok, what we are saying is to INCLUDE Facebook in your strategy so you’re not missing out on a huge group of active users.
#9 Sticking to the Status Quo
Change is hard, and generally, people don’t love it. But marketing is a fast industry and to survive and remain competitive you have to be willing to adapt. If your business hasn’t started using social media, AI tools, and SMS, it’s time to get on board.
Test and learn campaigns can help you try out tactics like social media ads and SMS without fully committing to strategy pivots.
#10 Missing True Connection
Whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer you are marketing to people. None of us like to have feature and benefit messaging shouted at us without any context for our needs. Building genuine relationships with your audience is critical for every marketer in every industry. Focus on real connections to drive long-term success. This includes fostering customer relationships post-sales to keep customers for life.
Need help reaching your marketing goals? Red Brick Partners has you covered!
Red Brick Partners is a marketing agency with 14 years of experience specializing in B2B and B2C marketing. Are you looking to redefine your lead generation strategy? We can help! We design our services to help our clients become more successful.