Stop, Calibrate and Listen

We toss around the phrase, “random acts of marketing” a lot here in the agency and creative world. Five years ago I posted the following:

Actual marketing advice I gave a client this morning who had their modest budget greatly expanded: Take some advice from Vanilla Ice, “Stop, calibrate and listen”.

Cheesy? Yes. Seriously, take a look at where you are. Is your messaging on point? Have you done market research, what are you missing? What is the strategy, both short and long term? What is working well, and more importantly why is it working? Often we only analyze what isn’t working, not what is. Tweak refine. Get the messaging right. Make sure you spend your budget efficiently, not wildly.

Randomly throwing money into marketing is great for marketing agencies that work on commission and media companies trying to sell you something, but increasing their profit doesn’t necessarily increase yours.

After decades of working at agencies of all sizes and specialities, one thing remains constant: Marketing is about more than one ad, one channel and one advertising opportunity. And, marketing rarely, if ever, is successful with out strategy. [Sure there are exceptions, and yeah, people win the lottery once in a while, too.]

The best marketing is customer service. Very few companies have the marketing budget to out spend the consequences of bad customer experience. It goes hand in hand, most marketing studies reveal areas where clients can improve their service and communication with their current customers.

As a search expert, I can send you all the clicks you can afford. But if your website, your store and your service aren’t up to par, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. To be successful, you have to understand where you need to improve, take the necessary steps, then consider marketing.

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