We Tried Marketing. It Didn’t Work

I hear this from business owners surprisingly often.

• “We tried LinkedIn. It didn’t work.”
• “We spent money on Google Ads. It didn’t work.”
• “We had a new website built. It didn’t work.”
• “We hired a marketing person. It didn’t work.”

But when I look beneath the surface, marketing itself is rarely the real problem. Usually, the business has tried a collection of marketing activities without the strategic direction, leadership or supporting infrastructure required to make them work.

• A new website was launched without first clarifying the company’s position or key messages.
• Google Ads were switched on, but the landing page gave prospects no compelling reason to enquire.
• Social media content was posted regularly, but it wasn’t speaking to a clearly defined audience or supporting a commercial objective.
• An agency was engaged to deliver campaigns, but nobody inside the business was responsible for directing the overall marketing strategy.

The activity happened. The results didn’t. And marketing got the blame.

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Marketing activity is not the same as effective marketing.

Most marketing tactics CAN work... Websites work. Email works. LinkedIn works. Events work. Advertising works. Content marketing works.  But none of them works in isolation simply because money, time and effort have been invested.

Before choosing a channel or launching a campaign, a business needs to answer some fundamental questions:

• Who are we trying to reach?
• What commercial outcome are we trying to achieve?
• What problem do we solve better than our competitors?
• Why should a prospective customer choose us?
• What do they need to understand and believe before they are ready to buy?
• How will marketing support the sales process?
• What will we measure to determine whether it is working?

If those questions have not been answered, marketing becomes a series of guesses.

The Three Gaps Behind Most Ineffective Marketing

Over many years, I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses across manufacturing, healthcare, professional services and other complex B2B sectors including insurance, construction, finance and others.

While every business is different, the same three problems appear again and again.

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1. No Strategic Marketing Plan/Roadmap

Marketing often becomes reactive. Sales slow down, so advertising is launched. The website starts looking dated, so it is redesigned. A competitor becomes active on LinkedIn, so someone decides the business should post more frequently.

There may be plenty of activity, but there is no clear sequence connecting the business goals, priority customers, competitive position, message, channels and sales process. Without that roadmap, even good work can become expensive noise.

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2. No Marketing Leadership

A business may have an internal coordinator, several agencies and a collection of capable specialists - yet nobody is leading the whole marketing function.

• The web developer focuses on the website.
• The digital agency focuses on clicks.
• The social media specialist focuses on engagement.
• The sales team focuses on this month’s opportunities.

Everyone may be doing their job, but who is deciding whether all those efforts are working together and contributing to the company’s growth priorities?

Marketing needs someone looking across the entire commercial picture: working with the business owner or Management team - setting priorities, challenging assumptions, coordinating resources and ensuring execution stays connected to business outcomes.

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3. No Commercial Accountability

Too many marketing reports stop at impressions, followers, clicks and website traffic. Those numbers can be useful, but they are not business outcomes.

The real questions are harder:

• Are we generating the right opportunities?
• Is marketing helping sales convert them?
• Can we explain what the business received in return for its marketing investment?

Marketing that cannot demonstrate a relationship to growth will eventually be treated as a cost and rightly so.

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Marketing is a Connected Business System

Effective marketing is not one campaign, one channel or one clever idea. It is a connected system. If one or more of those foundations is missing, adding more activity rarely solves the problem. It often just increases waste, confusion and trust.

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The right order is:

Business goals → Customer insight → Competitive advantage → Positioning → Messaging → Channel strategy → Execution → Measurement

Before you say marketing doesn’t work…

Ask whether the business has given it what it needs to succeed.

• Is there a strategic roadmap?
• Is the brand clear and differentiated?
• Does the website support sales?
• Does the business genuinely understand its priority customers?
• Are content, digital marketing and social media working together?
• Is there a CRM and nurturing process?
• Is the business using proof effectively?
• Is there enough budget, capability and leadership?

And is anyone measuring the results that actually matter?

These are just some of the areas covered in BEAM Marketing’s

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20 Marketing Essentials for Business Growth eGuide.

Click Here

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It’s designed to help business owners and management step back from the day-to-day activity and assess whether the fundamentals are genuinely in place - from strategy, brand and competitive advantage through to content, CRM, automation, customer experience, measurement and budget.

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Because the answer is rarely to simply “do more marketing.” The answer is to build a stronger marketing system - one that is strategically directed, properly led and commercially accountable.

‍Before you write marketing off, find out what is actually missing.