I’m here today to tell you the number one reason your marketing campaigns aren’t working.
And you might think that it’s because of the copy, and you might think it’s because of the design, and you might think it’s because of the coronavirus, but it’s none of the above.
The number one reason that your marketing campaigns stink is because you don’t have a clearly defined brand strategy.
Diagnosing the Problem
I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and I see it over and over again. It’s like when you go to the doctor, and you think you have a problem with your knee, but it really turns out to be a problem with your hip.
The problem is often not the marketing itself, or the tactics themselves. The problem is that they’re not connected or driven by a brand strategy. When they’re not being driven by one, it becomes like throwing tactics against the wall to see what sticks.
The Power of Brand Strategy
Compare that to having a clearly defined brand. When you intimately know who your customers are — what their motivators are, how they want to think about your brand, what their problems are, who might help them solve it, how they speak, the words that they want to use — you can really get into that customer mindset.
The power of your brand strategy is that you’ve articulated what you stand for, and how you’re different from everybody else. You have this amazing foundation that is going to drive all of your marketing programs and everything that goes into the market. So, you’re not guessing. Instead, you have a much more efficient and effective way to do your marketing.
The Bottom Line
If you have a marketing problem, and something’s not working, I urge you to go back and look at your brand strategy. And if you don’t have a brand strategy — and I don’t just mean a document with core values here, or a mission statement there — I mean a well-articulated brand strategy. If you don’t have one, that’s exactly where you need to begin in order to have go-to-market success. So, go fix your brand strategy in order to grease the skids for marketing.
Giddy up!