5 Signs It’s Time for a New Marketing Strategy

There’s a question that keeps business owners and their marketing people up at night:

“Is our marketing strategy doing what we need it to do?”

Sometimes the answer to that question is a solid: “nope.” Other times the answer is not as clear. It can be hard to know when to stick with what you’re doing, and when it’s time to blow things up and start over. To help, we’ve put together a list of 5 sure signs that it’s time for a new marketing strategy. Read on to see if they apply to you.

1.You’re not seeing results from your current marketing efforts

Most of our industrial marketing clients have this popular goal: Generate More Leads.

Take your goal (generating leads) then look at the data over the last year and ask questions like:

• How many leads have you brought in through your digital marketing efforts?
• How many users did you convert to leads?
• How much of your company’s revenue was influenced by your marketing activity?
• What does your sales and marketing funnel look like? (ratio of leads to MQLS to SQLs to customers)

Not tracking marketing data? You need to create a new strategy that includes regular and frequent tracking of marketing and website performance.

Pro tip: We use multiple tools concurrently to track our marketing performance and digital customer experience; Google Analytics, HubSpot, HotJar, Raven Tools, and more.

2.Your marketing strategy is 2-3 years old

Just like 1 year to a human is 7 years to a dog – 1 year of business is like 3 years to your marketing strategy.

Your buyers are changing, technology is changing, as are Google’s search rank algorithms.

Sometimes, the tried and true things “just work”, but odds are you need to revisit (or create) your buyer personas and your buyer’s journeys and then recalibrate your digital marketing strategy to support what you’ve learned. Then you’ll need to update critical pieces of digital infrastructure like your website.

Pro tip: It takes a village to deliver effective digital marketing. Do you have the people and skillsets you need? Use this checklist.

3.You’re launching a new product or tapping a new market

Introducing a new product requires educating your prospects and customers. The same holds true if you’re bringing an existing or new product to a new market.

New markets mean market research including persona interviews and creation of new target personas and buyer’s journeys. Then you’ll need to develop a content marketing strategy to reach them.

New products need a Go-to-Market strategy that includes a business plan (things like pricing and packaging, scalability), a sales plan (target audience, geography, sales cycle), and a marketing plan (messaging and positioning).

Pro Tip: A marketing strategy and a go-to-market (GTM) strategy are slightly different in that a GTM is a one-time effort used to launch a product or service. A marketing strategy is a part of the GTM and is the ongoing tactical effort to market that product or service.

4.Your buyers are changing

We recently spoke to a manufacturer who was frustrated that his customer base was changing and that he needed to figure out how to ‘reach millennials.’ He knew they consumed information and made purchasing decisions differently than their Boomer and Gen X counterparts.

You could try referencing avocado toast everywhere on your website, but we’d recommend evaluating your marketing strategy. Start from the foundation up – who is the ideal buyer, what are their pain points, and how are they searching and engaging online? These answers will point you toward marketing tactics, likely ones you have not used before.

5.You’re only doing one type of marketing

There are two types of marketing: inbound and outbound.

Inbound is anything digital (think podcasts, banner ads, downloadable content, video) and outbound is anything physical (think trade shows, billboards, radio, print advertising, etc.)

A successful marketing strategy uses both inbound and outbound tactics. You should be supporting your outbound efforts with digital content and vise versa. If you’re only focusing on one space to reach buyers (online or in-the-world) you’re missing out on engaging with the other half.

Keeping Your Marketing Strategy Up To Date

Things move fast. Watch for constant changes in:

• Search Engine Optimization strategies
• Facebook or other social media best practices
• Google search rank algorithms
• Website Best Practices

Once a quarter, stop what you are doing and ask tough questions like: is this working and is there a better (or new) way to do this? How have our business goals changed? How has our audience changed?

Get started by requesting a free website and marketing SWOT Analysis; our digital marketing experts will take a look under your hood and help you identify your gaps and priorities.