“I want to waste my marketing budget in 2017”, said no marketer ever! Yet, many will do so because they’re investing time and effort into activities that inadvertently squander resources. And as every marketer knows, your budget, and how well you use it, are determining factors in the success of your marketing campaigns. But how do you know whether you’re wasting your marketing budget or not? If you recognise any of the signs below, it’s likely you’ll waste that precious budget – but it’s not too late to make the changes that’ll safeguard it.
1) You're not using closed-loop reporting
Closed-loop reporting is a method of tracking which channels (social media, email, organic search) bring in the web traffic that eventually convert into leads and customers. Using cookies, a visitor’s every action on your site can be recorded, from their first visit to them filling out the form that turns them into a lead. Once they become a customer, you can attribute how you acquired them to the source. This approach gives you insight into which channel(s) you need to invest more time and money into. If you see that social media yields zero customers, there’s little sense allocating the largest chunk of your marketing budget to it – even if you get high engagement rates. Closed-loop reporting is also important for A/B testing – for example, testing two different calls to action, or content offers at the same time to see which one is most effective at converting leads – to determine which approach you should dedicate your budget to.
2) You hired too many internal marketing staff
There are benefits to using internal marketing staff – it’s easier to communicate with someone sitting next to you and they understand your company culture and industry better than a third party. However, you’re wasting your marketing budget if these marketing hires only spend half their time working on things they’re experts in. Let’s say there isn’t enough work in their particular field of expertise to keep them occupied for the entire working week. You might find something else for them to do the rest of time time – something they’re not well versed in, like writing long form content even though they’re a strategist. As great as they are at strategy, they just aren’t wordsmiths. You’re paying them expert rates for sub-expert results. And there goes your budget. The solution? Either hire them on a part time basis, or find an agency to partner with that you hire on a project by project basis.
3) You’re creating content, but without a strategy
A mistake many marketers make is thinking that B2B content marketing is simply creating and promoting content. The whole reason content marketing exists in the first place is to attract and convert leads – the right leads. Without a strategy and measurable returns, you’re just making art. A strategy involves identifying your target audience, creating content that will interest them, creating content offers to convert them into leads, and having metrics in place to measure whether the content is doing its job of converting visitors into leads and then customers. You also need to ensure that you’re promoting your content through the channels that your target audience inhabit, and that there’s a way for leads to convert at every touch point (such as landing pages with forms) – not just a ‘Contact Us’ page with an email form.
4) You’re targeting the right audience, but getting the wrong business
So you’ve created personas and are doing pretty well at increasing web traffic, and even converting that traffic into leads. Yet, your budget is still being wasted, because none of those leads are the right leads. Let’s say you’re targeting car dealer sales managers, but the majority of your leads are truck dealer sales managers. Although your visitor to lead conversion rates might be high, your lead to customer rates are low, because those truck dealers realise that your product can’t help them. You’ve spent money creating content and attracting traffic, but don’t see any ROI. By using an account based marketing (ABM) approach, you circumvent the problem of attracting the wrong business, because you only target those you know have need for the solution your product offers. With the data collected through market research and channel mapping, you can find and target your ideal customers. Once you know who they are, further research helps you tailor your marketing and messages precisely to them. The more targeted and personalised your marketing, the higher the chance that they become a customer, and the greater the ROI on your marketing budget, as you’re only investing resources into those who are likely to become customers.
If you’d like to find out just howaccount based marketing can help save your marketing budget in 2017, download our guide:
