4 Signs Your B2B Marketing is Weak
Let’s face it. No one likes admitting they have weakness. But just as a seasoned President can leave audiences devoid of inspiration, so too may an Operations Director lack empathy or an IT manager resist change. Marketers are no different.
For executives less versed in marketing, however, it can be challenging to pinpoint the flaws of the marketing organization, including its leadership, due to the shared nature of the marketing impact. Sales revenues, lead generation and customer acquisition cost (CAC) are generally a result of combined departmental efforts, for example. Thankfully, there are ways to spot marketing flaws before they wreak havoc on collective measures that can leave teams, divisions and business units frustrated and finger-pointing.
Here’s four signs that your marketing is a weak link:
- Misaligned goals. Marketing teams, agencies or departments can work in silos, leading to inconsistent messaging, duplicated efforts, slow decision making, stagnation or campaigns that simply don’t contribute to overarching business objectives. This can be visible in several ways, such as through creative output (i.e., running the same ad for two distinctly different campaigns to two distinctly different audiences), internal conversations with marketers (i.e., “how is marketing directly contributing to the corporate vision and direction?”) as well as results (i.e., low conversion rates, no measurable ROI). It adds up to waste, reduced effectiveness and lower return on marketing investment (ROMI).
- Poor onboarding and talent retention. Now don’t get me wrong – all departments can be susceptible to changes in the labor market. But, if months later, new marketing hires still seem “lost” (don’t know who or where to go for key information), convey irritation (particularly around a lack of information or process or making headway) or are the subject of constant blame, it may not be all HR’s fault. Your marketing organization may not have the right onboarding process standardized, nor training resources, mentorship or clear role expectations and accountabilities set up and communicated well. Regardless, it equates to longer ramp up times, decreased productivity and high employee churn.
- Lack of a unified brand voice. This is especially prevalent among SMBs: dated brochures with old logos, dissimilar content and ad designs (hello, Canva!), sales presentations created by enterprising account reps. To the untrained eye, it may appear harmless enough. But an inconsistent brand identity confuses customers, prospects and employees; diminishes trust; and deteriorates your brand valuation and competitive edge. The net effect of lost sales and customer and employee attrition can be severe. Research from Adobe showed that 71% of customers would discontinue purchases if there is brand distrust. Interbrand asserts that “67% of companies in the S&P 500 may be inaccurately valued due to the misunderstanding of one key business asset.” What asset, you ask? Brand.
- Data overload without insights. Modern marketing generates quite a bit of data. We will happily supply you with marketing qualified lead (MQL) volumes over specified time periods, click-through rates (CTR), cost per lead (CPL), bounce rates, net promoter scores (NPS) and much, much more. Data for the sake of data, however, is meaningless. Marketing teams wind up squandering time, effort and focus on pulling and crunching data to pepper into reports and PowerPoints for…no one to care. Actionable data, in which intelligent decisions can be made as a result, is the real prize. Next time you see a marketing metric, inquire about its purpose to distinguish lurking vanity metrics from genuine performance indicators.
Solve with Speed
The truth may be ugly, but it’s not about egos. It’s about pushing your marketing, and your business, to reach new heights of success. If you find your existing marketing efforts exhibiting one or several of these warnings, it’s necessary to address the issues with speed – and potentially, with outside resources like a fractional marketing leader. An external marketing expert lacks partiality and imparts his or her varied and extensive experience to identify the full landscape of challenges, impacts and potential solutions.
Solutions to the misalignment of goals, for instance, could involve establishing clear, shared and agreed-upon objectives using frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). It could mean regular meetings with stakeholders across departments, business units/segments, divisions, channels – you get the picture - so inconsistencies, objections and murkiness can bubble up to the surface early on.
The act of providing access to specific tools and reports can also create visibility without overwhelm. There are plenty of ways to solve your marketing challenges as long as the appetite and capability is there. Tackle your marketing weaknesses early and upfront with a strategic marketer by contacting Towers Fractional Marketing today.
