CLINIC: Why is my B2B marketing constantly changing?

In Clinic

If you’re a B2B business leader and it feels like your marketing spend isn’t driving the return you expect, you might be tempted to simply stop the spend. In my experience that would be a mistake.

Firstly, if you have invested in the first place it was because you saw a need to create a coherent proposition for your product or service, wanted to raise awareness or needed more sales. Or all three. Good quality, well targeted marketing can deliver all of those things. Plus your competitors won’t be walking away and, if they are getting it right, every day their competitive advantage grows.

 

So, what’s going wrong, why and most importantly how do you fix it?

Obviously, there is an infinite number of reasons that will be unique to your market, business maturity, staff and skills. In the following article, I’m going to tackle constantly changing marketing activity and apply insights from the twenty years I’ve spent working as a PR consultant trying to make businesses famous, as a Product Director trying to understand what customers want, and will pay for, and as a global VP of Marketing trying to align and inspire a team of 40 plus multi-discipline marketeers.

 

PROBLEM: A confused and constantly changing marketing approach.

 

SYMPTOMS: May include trying the latest trendy marketing methods such as podcasts or an Instagram channel.

Often the reason for this is a marketing team that doesn’t really know what they’re selling and who they’re selling it to.

It’s tempting to think good marketing employees should be able to just get on with raising awareness and creating engagements that turn into sales. However, a clear proposition is a non-negotiable bedrock if you want good ROI.

So how up to date and clear are your company and product or service propositions?

·      When did you last ask your customers why they bought from you? 

·      Do you have a clear set of high quality company messages that are used consistently? 

Without these you cannot have a strong brand. Inconsistency is the greatest enemy of any brand identity.

Any activity without a strong sense of what your brand represents (messaging and product propositions) and who to target (customer personas) results in marketing investment based on personal opinions, resulting in imperfect decisions and poor results. The end result is headless chicken syndrome!

CURE: Check you have the marketing basics in place and use those customer, product and service insights to guide the marketing activity you undertake and the channels you use.

 

 

Matrix Marketing has a team of experts that can help you review the current state of your marketing activity, suggest improvements and implement them. We help entrepreneurial business thrive by providing marketing support to develop or update company and service messaging or with expert advice on the best channels to invest in.

Get in touch at ana.ansell@wearematrixmarketing.com / +44 (0)1273 385671

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