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Sunday
21Feb2010

Turn a Failed Marketing Strategy Into Success

Image Credit: compujeramey

If your marketing efforts have failed to reach your targets and you're looking to turn those around, you have two choices. Invest more time and money hoping for the best, or look at your online strategy to identify your weakness. Here are couple of tips to help you with that. Rather than going into the particulars of each channel, this article is more designed to make you t(h)ink about possible reasons.

1. Stop focusing on failed channels - Online marketing is sometimes refereed to as online multi-channel marketing because it's combined from multiple channels. Each channel requires resources and based on your target market might convert better or worse than another channel. The trick is to stop focusing on failed channels and shift more resources towards the channels which have potential. After you manage to reach your targets, by all means, you might want to look at these channels again, but now you're coming from a stronger position.

2. Evaluate your management resources - It's possible that your online marketing efforts have failed due to lack of management resources. Online marketing channels require constant management, optimization and reporting. If you feel your strategy is correct, but it's a question of resources, look to expand your in-house team or consider hiring a 3rd party talent using a service like oDesk. Outsourcing parts of your marketing is more common than you might think. 

3. Take the plunge - While it's a good idea to stop focusing on failed channels, it's also a good idea to experiment with new possibilities. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge and responsibly try to drive sales using new channels. To reduce the chances of failure, experiment with new channels which you can easily (and quickly) measure their effectiveness. For example:

- Look at your social media strategy and find new opportunities.
- If you're using pay per click advertising consider advertising on the smaller engines as well.
- Perhaps your brand is mature enough now to start an affiliate program.  
- If your business is local, try local PR it's cheap and effective when done locally.
- etc

4. Re-examine your targets - If you're unable to reach your targets because they are not achievable, it's wise to re-examine those both for team moral and projected business growth. It might seem like an easy solution, however it does happen. Look to back-up your suspicions by examining other KPIs, not just bottom line revenue. For example, has basket size increased?, has the rate of returning customers increased?, has the rate of new product insertion increased? etc. It might be unfair to expect an increase in revenue based on one KPI alone (such as web traffic), while other KPIs haven't changed.

Online marketing can fail due to common mistakes, market changes and even a change in customer taste. If it does happen, it's important to look back at your strategy so you can turn failure into success. 

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This post was written by Guest t(h)inker Michelle Strassburg Co-Founder at Wood and Beyond, sellers of wood flooring and oak worktops. Michelle has over 10 years experience managing online marketing and is an active blogger.



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Friday
05Feb2010

4 Ways to Fight Failure

The following is a guest post by Michael Myers (@MichaelMyers) the founder of the Cruces blog.  Michael is a Business Model Architect who helps businesses utilize Social Media, the Mobile Internet and the iPhone as business tools.  He is also a mentor and great friend. This is his contribution to #FAILweek. Enjoy.


At the end of 2006, I agreed to open an office for an agency based out of NY. I had been wooed away from my current employer and had big aspirations of doing very well quickly. Unfortunately, I was quickly underwhelmed by the response the market gave me. Even though I had a very robust network, they knew me as a leader of professional services and not as a marketing person. Within three short months, they had pulled the plug on the entire endeavor and I was left to live off of what I had in savings and my 401k. Things were not good. At times like this it is pretty easy to point your finger and blame. I blamed them and they blamed me. Never got heated, just a huge disappointment for all involved. Why did this endeavor fail? 

  1.  Know yourself. You may invision yourself as the skilled pitchman but guess what. Just like tech, you either have the knack or you don't. I can sell (and do sell) but my strength is in closing the sale. Not generating the lead. That is a specific skill set and one that should be rewarded as much as anything else. Make sure your skills match the need before beginning. If it's not a match; find someone to help you.
  2. Know your network. Your network may be filled with highly skilled, influential people. Do those people have the authority to make a financial decision? If not; there is a strong chance they won't be able to get you the contract. (See point 1 if there is any confusion.)
  3. Make sure that everyone involved understands the risks and timeline with which success will be measured. I felt as though I was doing well having closed 3 deals in the first three months. The principals expectation was to boil the ocean in one month. 
  4. Have your parachute ready. I was so sure that this would succeed, I didn't have the finances prepared for failure. The CFO side of you should expect to fail and the CEO side of you will not accept failure. 
From this experience I learned what I was capable of and where my strengths were. You think you have some sense of this and yet failure puts it dead and center. Also, don't ever fear failure. It is the essential difference between knowledge and wisdom. Without failure; there is no wisdom.



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