Are you a business owner who follows the “let’s see what sticks” approach to marketing? Spaghetti tactics may be stunting the growth of your business if you are constantly jumping from one tactic to another, blindly trying every new trend suggested by the latest influencer or on a mere whim.
While there’s nothing wrong with experimenting and incorporating new tactics into your overall strategy, it’s crucial to consider how they integrate with the rest of your marketing efforts.
Here are three signs that tell you it’s time to break free from spaghetti marketing and regain control over your marketing approach.
1. Your Marketing Doesn't Have A Clear Message
Does your marketing look like you? Sound Like you? Branding is more than colors and logos! Your Business should have a consistent identity. That makes it clear who your audience is and speaks to them about your brand’s mission, values, and personality across all your marketing channels!
Develop Brand Guidelines: Outline your brand’s visual elements, tone of voice, and messaging guidelines. Share these guidelines with your team and any external partners to maintain consistency in all marketing communications. Conduct an audit of your marketing materials, both online and offline, to identify anything that seems inconsistent with your guidelines. Update them to ensure a cohesive and unified brand experience for your customers.
2. You Aren't Clear On Your Objectives
So you want to start podcast or build a following on TikTok. Both of these tactics can be used for different things and may be perfect for certain followings, but what is it that you need them to do?
Define Specific Goals: Without defined goals, a small business may engage in various marketing tactics without understanding how they align with their desired outcomes. To break free from this approach, it’s important to clearly articulate what you aim to achieve through your marketing efforts. Whether it’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving conversions, having specific objectives will guide your strategy.
3. You Aren't Tracking Your Impact
You may have goals, but are they the right ones for the channel you are using? How do you know if what you are doing is working without tracking something to indicate it’s working? This approach relies on gut feelings and assumptions rather than analyzing numbers to inform marketing strategies.
Set Up Tracking Mechanisms: You don’t have to be a data scientist to infer basic information from your analytics, especially when you decide on Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, ahead of time. Whatever you measure should have an impact on your overall goal.
For example, If your goal is to increase your reach and you decide to do that by creating a TikTok account, what data can you use to see if this effort is working? It may be new followers on TikTok or an increase in video views. You may track if you have an increase in web traffic attributed to TikTok. You may measure all of it to see the total impact of the effort.
Whatever you decide create a way to track it week to week. (It could just be a simple spreadsheet) and see if it makes a positive impact on your business.
4. Your Tactics Don't Work as One
A Facebook post here, Google Ads over there, a white paper buried under there…. You are doing all the things but how are they working together? If your tactics are not creating stepping-stones to your goal, your audience may get lost.
Map Your Marketing: If you want your audience to get to a certain destination (working with you) then you have to help them get there. Not every marketing effort is for getting that direct lead. Think about how all of your efforts work within your customer’s journey.
- How will they learn who you are?
- How will you help them remember about you when they have a need you can solve?
- How do they trust you will help them with their needs?
- How will you help them to decide to work with you?
- How do you keep them coming back?
Write each tactic out and label their purpose on the journey, If each of these questions were a stepping stone, is there any point where your message isn’t clear or a place where they have to take a big leap to get to the next step? How can you close the gap?
5. You Treat Marketing Tactics Like Speed Dating
Marketing takes time to build momentum and is not for those who want instant gratification. This is a BIG one for a lot of CEOs out there. Too often, when something doesn’t immediately produce a sale the effort is scrapped, and something else is shuffled into place.
Adopt a Test-and-Learn Approach: Marketing is not your closer…it plays the long game. Given good consistent effort and some subtle shifts to optimize, you can learn an incredible amount of information about how your tactics are impacting your business. Before scrapping it entirely and “throwing the next batch of spaghetti” give your marketing plan time to mature (at least 12 weeks) and only throw out what isn’t working or you run the risk of completely losing your audience!
Keep the Spaghetti for your Bowl and Start Getting Strategic with Your Marketing!
Let’s stop throwing spaghetti at the wall (Fun Fact: if it’s sticking it means it’s overcooked anyway!).
By approaching your marketing efforts with some thought you can really start to make a strategic impact on your business. Remember to have a consistent voice, get clear on your goals, track your impact, map your marketing, and test and learn.
Ready to Get Unstuck with your marketing and get your business moving toward success?
Let’s work together to create a rock-solid strategy that aligns perfectly with your goals. Contact me today and let’s embark on a transformative journey to unleash the true potential of your business. I’ll help you craft a step-by-step plan to revitalize your marketing approach. Your business deserves to thrive, and I’m here to guide you every step of the way. Let’s Chat!