Why it's so hard to get marketing strategies right!

This is a picture many entrepreneurs and CEO's face, often with every good intention in the book to make a change and get that marketing campaign happening, but once everyone has left the office, something else always comes up and that conversation is soon forgotten.

Sound familiar? 

Well, you are not alone, and this is the single biggest issue companies face when trying to grow their business and/or survive a changing market place.

Some companies have marketing departments, but the reality is that they know what they know, and nothing more, nothing less. That means that they are limited to their own exposure and experiences and are not able to ensure that a company is really utilising every best effort to build their brand, generate leads for sales teams and ultimately grow a company's revenue and sales.

More often than not, company's search Google to find out what to do. Funnily enough, there is a solution on Adwords, and that is make a list of marketing activities using various software such as ASANA and Monday. This is humorous to a marketing professional who has spent the past 28 years writing marketing strategies because they are meaningless if they don't have purpose and alignment to your overall business plan.  A list of tactics with no consistency across message or brand, is a waste of money. An adhoc approach is exactly that - adhoc. Not aligning your marketing strategy to your target audience and customers means that you may end up wasting a whole heap of cash that doesn't have any ROI.

Marketing strategies are an important part of business. They underpin the business plan and should complement the sales objectives and direction of the company. If someone starts with your company and refers back to the 4P's, know that they have read a text book but have never delivered a marketing strategy themselves. Steer away from newbies, because the best marketing strategy consultants have seen huge fails as well as big wins.

Make sure your marketing strategy is a complete, comprehensive blueprint that has a ROI. And never, ever write a list of the first thing that comes to your head.