Business Marketing: Why People Don’t Get Results from Marketing

The marketing function is the lifeline to business continuity and growth, yet many businesses are failing to utilise this valuable tool to its full potential. Multi-award winning marketing specialist Fraser Hay explains why ultimately there are only 4 reasons why people don’t get the results they expect from their marketing programme and how these issues affect the “Marketing Blueprint”.

I’ve been in this business for many years and time and time again I see the same barriers preventing potentially great businesses and business owners from reaching their potential. So let’s start off with the four most common reasons why people don’t get results from their marketing…do they sound familiar?

Reason One: Verbal Programming

Many people suffer from negative conditioning by family, friends, peers, associates, and suppliers who have all tried some form of marketing and communicated their poor results. We remember them. We don’t forget them. We dwell on them.  These negative memories leave long lasting memories and affect our “Marketing Blueprint”…they contribute to our negative conditioning and they shape our attitude towards marketing.

Reason Two: Modelling

Many business owners actually model their management style on a particular individual. Many life coaches recommend you model yourself on someone successful in your industry who has created a successful business, or has found a unique and proven approach….why not apply that concept of modelling to your marketing.

Find a proven system or process that you see others implementing and working, and apply it to your business.

Reason Three: Specific Incidents

Remember that one off, last minute ad that cost you £600 that didn’t generate a single lead? The networking event where you gave out 30 cards…and not one phone call….The marketing seminar you paid £5K on, and by the time you got home, you’d forgotten half of it, and they showed you no real world examples. Remember the mailing list you bought, with 38% goneaways?

We remember these negative experiences. We dwell on them. We replay them over in our minds, time and time again. These negative experiences leave long lasting memories that mould our thinking and affect our “Marketing Blueprint”

Reason Four: Working with Symptoms

Successful marketing starts with addressing the real marketing issues that are holding you back now. No matter what techniques or strategies many people apply (even if they are the right ones), they usually fail because they're not addressing the real marketing issues or have gotten to the root of their marketing problems - they're only dealing with the symptoms.

The same 4 reasons above are probably preventing your prospects from doing business with you….

What if…they may have received verbal conditioning about you, your products, your brand, they may have received verbal conditioning for years about a negative experience someone had with product or service like yours.

What if… your prospects are searching for a mentor, or someone to model their business, their process, their systems on – and you might be the one they’re looking for, they just haven’t found you yet.

What if… they have had a bad experience personally with one of your competitors, this could have quite an impact on their “blue print” and perceptions of others – i.e.; you, in the same industry.

What if… they simply can’t see the wood for the trees, are bogged down in dealing with the symptoms of the problems that you can fix or address head on, but they just don’t realise it yet.

One, some or all of the reasons may well apply to your business.

Your Prospects need to know that you recognise their problems, and more importantly, you need to be able to present your business case and articulate your unique selling point, elevator pitch or core marketing message in such a way that it differentiates you from your competitors.

As a general statement, if more business and website owners knew the best methods to find, locate, qualify, and convert more leads online and offline, it would result in more leads, enquiries, prospects, sales and referrals, and a greater, faster growth for their business too.

Many just need a real competitive advantage and by applying simple, proven, methods, the marketing of their products and services wouldn’t be a negative experience.

Wouldn’t it be great if each day you generated hungry prospects eager to want to work with you.

Think of the positive impact that would have on you. Wouldn’t it be great if those prospective clients converted into real enthusiastic clients that recognise and pay you what your worth?

They all should.  However, quite often marketing can be a struggle for many business owners, cutting corners lowering their price, thus eating into their margin, just to win the sale.

Successful marketing starts by identifying what you need to do and analysing why people are attracted to you. It's simple. You need to identify what's wrong with your marketing now.

You need to analyse exactly...

·         Who your prospective clients really are

·         The real problems and issues they are experiencing/facing,

·         How you can help them with the solution you have to offer

·         The best way for you to state your case why they should select you

·         How you will get your marketing message out to your target audience

At the end of the day, you need to be aware of the negative programming that your prospects may already have experienced, the affect it has had on their “marketing blueprint” and that it may be preventing them from doing business with you.

You need to remind them that marketing is all about satisfying needs, help them to identify

those needs, and state your best business case why they should be doing business with you.

Fraser J. Hay is a multi award winning Scottish Entrepreneur, author and Lead Generation Coach.  Fraser and his marketing solutions have been featured in the national press and SKY television with clients experiencing returns on investment of up to 2400%. To try his highly acclaimed 3 Minute marketing Audit for FREE, or for more information on 2500 ways to generate leads, enquiries, prospects, sales and referrals online and offline, then visit www.leadgenerationmba.com

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