You will have read or heard me say often, that you need to do the groundwork in marketing before rushing into campaigns. You can’t do campaigns – for lead generation, if you haven’t first thought about asking your customers what value they get from you, understanding your prospects and then articulating that in a way that is meaningful. Well I am glad to point to a recent report that confirms that shockingly, over 70% of marketing activity is not delivering sales results. You can read the whole article in ‘Marketing’ yourself, but not having the right content and value propositions are stated as the key reasons:
“[The report] found that 71% of marketers focused more of their campaigns on new media in 2013, particularly mobile, online and social, believing it to be the best means of achieving results. However, the report found those same marketers did not spend enough time on research, development and testing “relevant product customer value propositions (PCVPs) and/or communication customer value propositions (CCVPs)”.
Jerome Fontaine, Fournaise’s global chief executive and chief tracker, said: “The key 2013 marketing performance lesson is simple – campaigns and activities without crafted, researched and optimised CVP architectures will under-perform, regardless of the media channels they are deployed in.”
In summary it says, “Result: the right content rather than cutting-edge tools delivers marketing success says report.”
Now there are a few abbreviations used in there. But basically, the issue is that people are not spending time researching and thinking about the true value of what they offer to customers and articulating that in a way that is compelling, in meaningful content. Much time is spen
t on campaigns and new media, but this is just an output, a form of marketing. The essence is knowing your customers and prospects and communicating what you offer in a way that rings true to them. Of course you cannot do that without campaigns, as you would not then generate leads but leave it out and your campaign money is wasted.
As I mentioned in my previous blog on measuring marketing success, there are two focuses of marketing: 1) Brand, message and strategy and 2) campaigns and marketing activity. The two cannot operate without each other. You can also look at my Marketing 101 page to see more on this.
If you are looking for help, I am a part time marketing director, part time marketing manager, marketing consultant for Bucks, Berkshire and UK wide.
