If you’re trying to develop a comprehensive marketing plan, you’re likely to need multiple different strategies and mediums working together as one. That isn’t always as easy as it sounds, either. If you feel like your marketing methods are disjointed and not working well together, the reasons below might give you some idea as to why.
There’s no brand to build on
First of all, you need to have a working brand at the heart of your marketing strategy. The brand is the message, the voice, and the identity that your marketing should be built on. If you don’t have a clear brand, then your different marketing methods and teams might be trying to focus on entirely different aspects of the company. While having a diverse range of benefits to offer your customers and clients is no bad thing, having an inconsistent message very much is. Build a brand, and ensure that it is at the heart of all of your future marketing efforts.
You don’t have marketing teams working together
As your marketing plans grow, and you spread your roots into new methods and mediums, it’s very likely that you’re going to have to rely on more marketing teams. This might include new internal marketing staff as well as outsourced providers. However, without any kind of connector role, as explained by Michael Kassan, to unify your needs with those of the different companies you’re working with, it’s easy for everyone to go off in their own direction. A clear and distinct effort has to be made to marry the efforts of your team to a centralized plan.
Failure to see the connections
It’s not just that different marketing methods working together can ensure a consistent aim, either. They can also very much benefit each other. For instance, Shreeharsha Hegde writes about how different content marketing methods across different channels can see them benefit one another. Similarly, good content marketing can improve search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, and more.
Marketing should build on marketing, all of them connecting and piggybacking off each other in a way that continuously brings the audience closer to the end point of conversion (or a repeat sale.) Make sure that you know how your various marketing channels link up and benefit each other.
No clear goal
If you don’t have a clear purpose and goal behind your marketing strategy, then your various marketing methods and both internal and external teams could very much be working at crossed purposes. If some are working on improving brand recognition while others are working on pushing customers further down the marketing funnel, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will undermine each other, but clear goals can set a direction to bring all of your marketing might together for a more effective collaboration.
Simply put, you have to ensure that your marketing strategies are working together, or else it will all fall apart. Whether you need someone in a connector role, a clear set of objectives, or a stronger brand, find what your marketing strategy is missing.
