Unveiling the inefficiency culprits

Marketing efforts should entice customers and drive revenue. Yet, a lack of marketing efficiency can cause missed opportunities.

The road to smooth marketing execution isn’t without its challenges. Whether it’s misaligned strategies, disconnected messaging, or clunky processes coupled with poor use of data, understanding the root causes of inefficiency is the first step toward better marketing performance management.

Next up are five factors I’ve seen hold companies back.

Understanding audience emotions

If you understand audience emotions and behaviours, you’ve got a good compass guiding your marketing. Overlooking this important detail will lead to publishing content with hollow messages and campaigns that miss the mark.

Marketing inefficiency arises when there’s a disconnect between what customers are looking for and the brand promise.

So next time you’re launching a campaign, ask yourself, “What actually moves my audience?”

And if you haven’t got a clear picture, explore their customer journey, that is, how they think, feel and behave. Then update your messaging and activity to reflect this.

Creating an Empathy Map for your personas might be a good place to start to get into your audience’s shoes. Empathy Maps are used to visualise a persona’s attitudes and behaviours. VP of Nielsen Norman Group Sarah Gibbons, has written extensively on how to use empathy maps.

Storytelling with purpose

Throughout history, stories have been used to impart knowledge, entertain or create cultural identities.

Efficient marketing requires stories that weave brand narratives. Products and services that are presented as soulless commodities with a list of features give your audience zero context. This makes it hard to see why your solution solves their situation.

So next time you create content, start with what your audience will gain. Position your solution with purpose by showing how it will improve their lives.

Seamless buying journey

People are more likely to remain engaged with a well-rounded buying journey.

So move prospects seamlessly through the funnel by integrated marketing initiatives across buying stages, channels and campaigns:

• Choose channels that suit your audience and collect data from each channel at each funnel stage. This will help create targeted campaigns that are optimised, as well as tailor content for higher conversion rates.
• Use a mix of organic and paid channels to spread the message and increase awareness.
• Create interesting lead magnets to capture interest.
• Use customer and campaign data to understand and nurture prospects with email marketing. And continue to add value with helpful content that also highlights expertise.
• Connect nurture campaigns with remarketing efforts and activities across other channels to maintain engagement.
• Guide leads with personalised landing pages and tailored offers based on customer data that entices them to buy.

Optimising with data

Are you tapping into insights to uncover trends, behaviours and campaign performance?

When navigating budget constraints and resource allocation, data helps identify the best performing initiatives, ensuring the ones that drive good leads and consistent sales are adequately prioritised to maximise ROI.

Invest in marketing performance management tools, automation and reporting tools. Consolidate marketing platforms where possible to reduce costs.

Sadly there’s no one marketing platform that’ll do it all. So if you’re using several tools, streamline data from your different sources to avoid silos. And capture the right performance metrics across all funnel stages, channels and campaigns.

Doing so will help you identify total cost per lead, any efficiency gaps, and the top performing initiatives to double down on.

Balance perspective on competition

Keeping an eye on competitors will give you perspective on market dynamics and opportunity.

But excessive fear can be distracting. While your competitors could be investing in understanding their customer, you might be neglecting yours.

The CEO of a company I worked with, once shared their hesitation to announce two of their biggest partnerships: “Best we keep the news for prospect meetings behind closed doors. The minute Competitor X finds out, they’ll try to mimic our strategy.”

Now these new partners were huge. The credibility they gave this medium sized business would put it on the map and nudge potential customers to get in touch.

Finally recognising competitors would get wind through other avenues, the CEO had a change of heart. The deal was announced, clearly outlining the unique value proposition it offered customers. This meant the announcement was released before becoming public knowledge, creating PR buzz and leading to several enquiries from qualifying prospects. And some years later to a collaboration involving Competitor X.

Addressing marketing inefficiency head on

The path to marketing success is about addressing inefficiencies head-on, with a continuous process of refinement, growth, and the willingness to adapt.

Make sure you know your customers to create a brand story with messaging that resonates and campaigns that guide them along the path to purchase.

Integrate data from various sources to assess campaign performance and understand your overall campaign ROI.

And don’t get blinded by fear of competition. For all you know competitors aren’t adversaries. So keep a balanced perspective and instead focus on what the customer needs and what they want to know in order buy from you.