5 Mistakes You're Making That Are Killing Your Marketing Campaigns

In a past article from Juntae DeLane, he brings up very good succinct points about pitfalls of marketing campaigns.

1. Lack of Audience Understanding

Having a greater understanding of your audience should be the first step when developing a campaign strategy. Some entrepreneurs will produce evergreen campaigns with no specific targets hoping that new targets will emerge. Some may see a practical benefit in doing so; however, why run two campaigns to accomplish one task? Your marketing campaign will be optimized by doing research beforehand so you can make an impactful and relevant introduction to your brand.

The key to digital marketing is knowing your audience.  The more information you have about your customer the better and when using marketing automation tools, it is important to utilize this knowledge.  It is easy to lump as many individuals together and call them segments, however the more individualized your campaigns can become, the better experience the customer will have interacting with your brand or product.  

2. No Strategy

Many marketers get confused when talking about strategies and tactics.  A tactic is how you are going to do something, the strategy is what you are going to do.  They must work in tandem.  Many times marketers start with the tactics, "we are going to send an email to all of our customers who abandon a cart".  Why are you doing this?  You have to start with the strategy of "increase our sales from all parts of the funnel" to reach the tactic.  Otherwise, how do you know the goal?  The goal may be simplified in this case, but so many times a marketing plan is not strategic, it is a list of tactics the company is going to employ.  

Having an overarching strategy will help guide decision making.  Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.  Focus is the key and understanding the strategy assists in that focus.  

3. Too Much Sales Pitch

I think another way to think about this is understand your customers are not stupid.  They know when they are seeing content from your company they are being sold something.  They want to understand why they need something, how will this make my life better, will I feel satisfaction with this purchase.  By trying to convince them to buy leads to buyers remorse.  The ultimate goal is to create loyal customers that will return again and again to purchase. 

4. No Tracking or Data

With all the tracking services out there, you should be able to easily track your campaign efficacy. From Google Analytics to KISS Metrics you can establish a tracking dashboard at virtually no cost.

However, what will kill your marketing campaign is if you identify the incorrect metrics.

I don't see this too much, most everyone is tracking some kind of performance.  I believe in the comment from above, what are the key metrics that drive the business.  If number of sales is your key metric, this can come at a loss because the amount of money invested to drive those increased sales is more than the revenue being generated.  Be careful to choose your metrics wisely.

5. Too Much Branding

I think everyone believes in increasing brand loyalty is key to a successful business, but this goes so much deeper than pushing the brand.  Brand loyalty comes from consistency, delivering the promise of the brand and always putting the customer first.  These don't come from a catchy slogan or advertising, this comes from hard work to deliver the best customer experiences.  The brand is all aspects of the transaction, from the customer service agent answering the phone to the ways in which a mobile app enhances the buying experience.  

Turn Your Data Into Smart Data

Great insights from Scott Houchin regarding data.

To harness and convert data into stronger business strategies and overall profitability, approach data practices with a holistic integration of people, process and technology, following three key steps: collection, strategy and alignment.

A data strategy is the first step in becoming a data-driven organization.  Setting up the structure and expertise of the organization has to start before jumping into data strategies.  This can happen outside of the confines of IT.  The business leaders should own the data, as long as they have the expertise and knowledge to do so.  Try to set up procedures to be agile with your processes.  The longer it takes to implement changes in data, the less of a competitive advantage your organization has.  It will also be near impossible to become data-driven if there is a constant wait for data to be delivered to the end users.

Collection

Start with a clear understanding of project goals and requirements to guide the collection process. Establishing this helps ensure data collected is “smart” or meaningful. Collection shouldn’t narrowly focus on new data. Many organizations already have a goldmine of owned data that should be tapped. To make the most of historical data, scan legacy systems, such as social pages or purchase history, map findings back to strict uniform terminology, and fill in the gaps where data is missing across the organization.

Having a process for collecting new data and examining historical data up front ensures quick and accurate collection, minimizing time spent on governance practices and carving down unnecessary data sets.

There is a treasure trove of data already being collected in most organizations.  Ensure that this data is being properly collected and stored.  The goal is to ensure as many people can get to the data as possible, data democratization.  If data is stored and is hard to get to, takes complicated joins and there are no tools available to the organization to easily access the data, then more has to be done to reach these goals.

Strategy

Once data is collected, work with data-marketing specialists to analyze and align functional uses and marketing’s business goals. This requires a team of analysts and strategists who have both high levels of industry and domain expertise to identify sources, manage collection and road-map operations processes.

Teams of analysts can help organizations identify, collect and integrate data from sources and channels, like web traffic, Facebook, Salesforce, etc., into a proprietary database. Once established on a datamart, it can be integrated into current campaign tools through human labor. Having this data integrated into marketing tools gives brand-side marketers the insights to improve customer experiences, measure performance of digital assets, predict customer decision stages, etc.

Data should not be financial focused, it should be customer focused for the greatest impact on ROI.  Marketers have to own their data.  Hiring analysts and data domain expertise is imperative for success.  If ownership lies outside of the marketing resources, there is a much higher likelihood of failure.  Remember, CMO's and CIO's don't speak the same language.  

Alignment

Another example can be demonstrated with IT and marketing. Marketers spend more on technology than some IT departments now, but need alignment to ensure data is stored, platforms are integrated and in-house technical support is available. Alignment between these two departments appeases both marketer’s need for autonomy and IT’s domain over platforms, allowing for the integration of datamarts into other units’ datasets from the onset.

IT is still very critical for success with this strategy.  Just because IT does not own the data, doesn't mean they aren't extremely important.  IT needs to ensure the network is working, data is flowing and collection tools are working.  They also need to be support for when things break and they should control the access to the systems.  Make sure IT understands the goals and agree on the toolsets being chosen, so they can support them.  

Across The Board, CMOs Struggling To Deliver An Integrated Customer Experience

Daniel Newman writes for Forbes:

Back in January of this year in an article entitled Are CMOs Poised To Take Over Technology Purchasing? I wrote that “Whether they (CMOs) are ready or not, technology is fast becoming an inextricable part of the CMO’s functions, and they need to participate in making tech decisions in order to determine the ROI for purchases.”

Based upon the results of a recently released study from The CMO Club and Oracle Marketing Cloud a great number of CMOs are indeed not ready to utilize the technology that is available to them as a means to deliver upon long sought after integrated customer experience.

The days of a CMO not being technology savvy are over.  CMO's need to understand technology as well as they do brand.  The tools being developed in the marketing cloud space are very compelling, but they are nascent, so the demands to implement are greater than they will be 5 years from now.  Implementing technology toolsets are not for the faint of heart and the better the CMO understands the toolsets, the faster to market.  

CMO's should be data savvy.  They should understand where the data lives, how it flows and what the data is telling them about the customer.  It all starts with the data.  

Be the customer champion every step of the way: CMOs need a clear understanding of how customers and prospects interact with their brands at every stage, from consideration, to engagement, to purchase and advocacy. They are the voice of the customer, translating insights to actions across every organizational function.

This was a big focus of Adobe Marketing Cloud Summit 2015.  Their tagline "Marketing beyond Marketing", which didn't resonate as much as they hoped, is what the customer experience is all about.  Marketing has to be involved with all touchpoint throughout the organizations.  This involves operations units which have not been a priority for marketing in the past.  

Become BFFs with your CIO: Of those surveyed, only one of 110 respondents referenced a positive relationship with their CIO. A critical action item for a CMO is to reach out to their CIO to collaborate, plan, and integrate activities.

This may be easier said than done.  Most CIO's and CMO's do not speak the same language.  If a CMO is technologically savvy, it will be easier to communicate with the CIO to create the technology roadmap for the customer experience.  The scary part of this is only 1 out 110 CMO's surveyed have a positive relationship with their CIO.  Either the CMO has to move toward technology or the CIO has to move towards marketing.  I prefer the former.  

Co-design the optimal customer-driven technology roadmap: CMOs need to develop an understanding of the technology that is required to deliver the optimal customer experience and co-design the technology roadmap with the CIO, allowing flexibility in design to incorporate new technology and third party applications.

Again, this becomes impossible if the CMO and CIO are not in sync.  Both sides have to respect each other for the relationship to become collaborative and if the CMO is not also a technologist, the chances of this item happening are slim.  

Rethink your marketing organization and processes: There are many formal and informal opportunities to create collaboration across marketing departments and technology. As critical as it is to building the right culture and cross-functional environment, it’s also critical to hire the right talent.

As I wrote in Agile is the Key to Digital Marketing Success, the structure of the marketing organization needs to be changed.  Marketing organizations need to include technology resources in order to be agile in the digital marketing age.  Developing a technology culture within the marketing organization is a main component for delivering great customer experiences.

Establish a system for continuous improvement: The customer is outpacing companies in terms of their expectations for personalized service compared to a company’s ability to act on the information – both technologically and analytically. The CMO of today must – in addition to being agile – be open to taking chances and remain risk receptive.

If you're not failing you're not trying.  Marketing is a living breathing entity, especially in the digital age.  There will never be a time when a marketing organization can implement a plan and then check it off the list.  CMO's need to have their fingers on the pulse of society and the technology that customers are moving towards.  Just when a company has implanted their mobile strategy, here comes the watch and the Internet of Things that may change the way marketers have to think.  Having a technologist as the CMO will increase the chances that the organization will stay in touch with the customers, no matter where they move to next.