Most of us saw over two feet of snow in the past 2 weeks leaving kids with no school, power outages, numerous businesses closed and everyone hoping for the best.  Unfortunately, a lot of companies marketing strategy is based on the same tactic…hoping for the best.  Hoping your marketing efforts generate leads and produce a positive ROI is not a strategy.  A lot of companies say their marketing plan is to work on their SEO, pay for Google Ad words, post a blog but have no idea what the ROI is for those efforts. The equivalent would be buying a very expensive snow blower but having no gas to run it and no idea how to use it while hoping it cleans the snow off of your driveway. 

Below are 3 of most common mistakes we see when helping companies build their marketing strategy.

SEO

SEO is a science and is a constant battle to achieve a page 1 SERP (Search Engine Results Page).  The problem for a lot of companies is that they choose the wrong keywords for SEO of their website pages.  For example, if you are an insurance agency you might never be able to get on page 1 for the keyword “insurance agency” since all of the major carriers will outrank your page.  The other option you will have is to do paid advertising to get ranked on page 1 which would be extremely costly.  Instead, you could use a more specific keyword phrase like “auto insurance in Cambridge” if Cambridge is where you are looking to write more auto insurance coverage. 

To determine your website pages SEO ranking, Google uses an algorithm of keywords, url name, H1 tags, meta tag, alt tag, title tag, inbound links, outbound links and other variables that are always changing.  If you aren’t familiar with these terms then stop trying to do SEO internally and hire someone to do it for you.  You also need to determine if it is even possible to get on page 1 and if not then don’t waste your time and/or money on SEO.  Once you do hire an outside firm make sure you are tracking your ROI by keyword.

Online Advertising

When working with new clients a lot say they are doing Google Ads or other online advertising.  When we ask what the ROI is most can’t give us an answer.  If you don’t know the ROI how can you make an informed decision on spending more or less on this marketing strategy?  These marketing strategies can be effective if done right by targeting the right groups and using effective keywords.  Typically, we see that companies are spending money on the wrong keywords or even worse have a negative ROI and are not only spending money on the advertising but also paying an outside agency to manage the ads.

Did you know 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn?  LinkedIn is just one example of way to more efficiently execute online advertising.  There are lots of new, innovative and effective marketing tools that you should be reviewing to determine the best fit for your needs.  Again if you don’t know them then hire someone who is an expert to help you.

You don’t know what you don’t know

It’s difficult to stay on top of the ever-changing marketing landscape.  There are now 7,000+ different types of marketing tools in the market so knowing all of their capabilities is a major challenge.  How do you choose the right tool and once you choose that solution how do you make sure you are effectively using it?

A great example is Hubspot which is an Inbound Marketing tool that has seen substantial growth over the past few years.  We are big Hubspot users and are certified in all their products and there are always new tools, tricks and tips we learn every day.  A lot of companies tell us they are using Hubspot and then when we do an analysis we see they are not using the social publishing tools effectively, don’t have the lead generation tools optimized or are missing workflows to nurture their leads.

Marketing is a dynamic process that is ever changing.  If you don’t adapt then you will be snowed in with no shovel, no food and no power while your competition is plowing through the marketplace.  Don’t get snowed in…hire someone like Derby Management to plow you out.

Comment below on what tools you use that you have found effective.

Have a question or need help?  Email john@derbymanagement.com