How to fix a marketing strategyYour marketing mission: Discover ways to position your business as remarkable.

One of the things we often hear from potential prospects and clients is, “I don’t think my marketing is working and I don’t know why!”

The good news is that there’s a pretty simple way to tell if your marketing strategy is getting you results.

Usually, if you need to ask the question if you’re experiencing any results, that probably means you’re not. There is one crystal clear way to determine your marketing’s effectiveness: leads. If your company isn’t receiving the leads it needs to grow; your marketing is not working – plain and simple.

If you aren’t receiving enough (or any) leads, now it’s time to find out what’s wrong.

There could be several matters contributing to this issue.

Some of them may be that you are delivering an awful experience to your customers. If your clients are telling the world to stay away from your business, no amount of marketing investment is going to help fix that fundamental issue.

But let’s keep this blog post simply about analyzing potential issues with your marketing strategy and execution.

Who are you hoping to attract? And what is your message to them?

One problem might be that you are delivering a generic message that isn’t targeted to any specific person – and chances are that means it’s not very appealing to anyone. You need to know who your ideal prospects (buyer personas) are, understand their traits, behaviors, and demographics. You also need to know where they go for their information.

Does your marketing stand out?

Now look at the message your sending to potential prospects and customers and be brutally honest with yourself. How do you stack up? Put yourself in the shoes of a stranger who is going online to research all the competition. If you don’t stand out from the competition, how will your prospects ever find you and want to act and engage with you? You need to stand out; you don’t have a choice. Be remarkable in your actions and the story you tell.

What marketing tactics are you executing?

Relying on one or two tactics won’t be enough to drive the leads you want. If you are spending money on only on traditional advertising, direct mail, cold-calling, then the ROI on your investment might not be what you need to make a difference. You need to consider replacing or combining them with inbound marketing tactics that can deliver a direct increase in leads for your business.

Do you have marketing goals?

You probably know you should have marketing goals, right? Do you know how many unique website visitors you need to attract and leads to convert that you want to get from your site? How about the number of leads from all marketing activities you need to close to ensure you reach your revenue goals? If you haven’t set any goals, then you’ve got a little bit of H.W. to do.

Does your marketing budget accurately reflect your goals?

If you have aggressive growth goals, does your investment in marketing resources align with where you are planning on going? If you want to increase revenue by $1 million, investing in a $2,000 marketing budget won’t work. You need to commit to building a sustainable, repeatable marketing strategy that will get you to your goals and continue to help you to reach them.