There are a lot of challenges to establishing a consistent marketing message and delivery. Some of which are perfectly valid, but still not worth the cost to you and your ability to build a consistent presence in the market.
Some of the more common challenges I hear about from my clients include:
Wrong market: This is much more common than you think, but in too many cases we find ourselves looking at the wrong market or the wrong buyers because we failed to ask ourselves the most basic of questions like:
* What’s the tangible value I provide or want to provide to my clients?
* Who can use this value and will buy it?
* Where do I reach these buyers?
Poor value proposition: This goes without saying, but if you don’t have a strong value proposition, you either are a commodity or you are out of work.
Inconsistent delivery: As I said at the top, there are a lot of reasons your marketing message will suffer, but one of the most common is just inconsistent focus on your marketing message and delivery.
Poor message alignment: I have written about alignment here a lot. And, one of the worst causes of poor message consistency is poor message alignment. You absolutely have to look at your message and make sure it is aligned with your goals and the value you deliver.
Too many messages: This is pretty common as well. I see it pretty regularly that organizations are attempting to sell everything to everyone and that always fails. You need to stop trying to be everything to everyone.
Jumping around with your messaging: This is the little brother to the point above. You need to have a consistent message that you deliver consistently. You can’t hope to get any penetration if you jump from one message to the next, based on some external situation.
No call to action: Hey, what if you are doing things right and nothing is happening? Maybe you aren’t asking for the action you want to occur? You want someone to buy or sign up? Ask!
Reactive actions: Your marketing should be a proactive, targeted effort. In too many cases, it is a response to something external….that’s failure waiting to happen!
No follow up mechanism in place: This is all too common. You have a good message and you deliver consistent messages and people like it…but when they reach out to engage, you don’t have follow up practices in place and you lose these potential clients because of loss of focus!
I’ll cover these topics in more depth later, but I’m sure if your marketing efforts are struggling right now, you can point to one of these causes.
What are you going to do about it?