Ever felt like the marketing you're doing bears an uncanny resemblance to that phrase "throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks?"
I can relate. For me, it looked like this: Eleventy billion ideas (that's a real number btw), not enough time, and the budget? Well, that’s a whole other story.
But despite slogging away, it can sometimes seem like nothing moves the needle. Or if that needle is moving, it’s ever so slowly.
It's taken me many years to work out how that you can't afford to throw 'marketing spaghetti' at the wall, UNTIL, you've got consistent sales and revenue coming in. It's just not financially doable otherwise.
If you've ever felt like YOUR marketing doesn't work, here's how to fix that. Even better, you can get through this episode quicker than it takes to boil a pot of noodles.
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Marketing Challenges and Business Metaphors 0:02
Identifying Successful Strategies 3:08
Reflecting on Past Campaigns 4:16
Analyzing and Reverse Engineering Obstacles 7:06
Planning and Executing Effective Campaigns 8:10
Focusing on Core Business Activities 9:33
Final Thoughts and Call to Action 10:10
Full article: https://salenaknight.com/feel-like-your-marketing-is-more-miss-than-hit-heres-your-fix/
(upbeat music) - Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. If you're looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or e-commerce business, then you're in the right place. I'm Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi-award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level. I'll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started? (upbeat music) - There and welcome back to the show. Now, I don't know if I've told this story before, but when my daughter Lana was a toddler, she loved to cook. We were cook all sorts of things. Cakes, muffins, all of the things. But like most kids, she went through that phase, you know, the one where she only wanted to eat the same thing every single night. Now for her, it was playing pasta with olive oil, a little sprinkle of pumice on cheese and a side salad. It had to be the complete deal. Absolutely simple when it comes to preparing a kid's meal. Now occasionally, we would spice things up with a slice of garlic bread. And she had that same dinner. I'm gonna say for at least five years. So there I was boiling endless pots of spaghetti. Hene, spirals, you name it, I cooked it. And one day, to make Lana laugh, I did the old, throw a piece of spaghetti at the wall trick. You've heard of it, right? The idea that if the pasta sticks, it's ready. If it's not, it needs more time. I'm not sure if that's the most hygienic way to test your pasta, but it sure beats burning your fingers, trying to squish a hot noodle between them. That little trick became a metaphor for something else in my life. And maybe yours too. In business, it often feels like we are throwing a marketing spaghetti at the wall and just hoping something sticks. Have you felt like that? Like you are throwing a D after ID, some of them expensive, some of them time consuming. Just to see if one of them might work, I've been there too. You have 11 billion ideas, not enough time, and the budget, well, that's a whole different story. And despite working hard, it can sometimes feel like nothing moves the needle. Or if that needle is moving, it is moving ever so slowly. Now, I think this is really pertinent right now, because the economic landscape has changed so much in the last five years. It has been a complete roller coaster. And what's worked in the past may not work for you now. But the truth is, whilst the marketing tactics might change, the systems and marketing and business as a whole has a core of foundations that are rock solid. So if you feel like you've been throwing spaghetti at the wall and it's not sticking, how do we stop this cycle? How do we move from crossing our fingers and hoping something will work to knowing that it will? Here's how. Step one, start by looking at what is already working for your business, what strategies, what products, what campaigns have gotten you results in the past. And focus on that, repeat it, perfect it. Most of us have success staring us in the face, but we are too distracted by the next shiny thing to even notice. Step two, you will come up with 27 reasons why you can't do more of what works. I don't have enough staff, I don't have the inventory. We just ran that promotion last month. Sound familiar? And this leads us to step three. You will start searching for shiny new solutions. You will tell yourself that you need a new strategy or a new platform or a new campaign or even worse. You might even find yourself saying, I've tried that before and before you know it, you are back to throwing more expensive spaghetti at the wall and hoping, crossing your fingers and hoping that this time it will stick. Let me tell you something from my experience. I did this for years. I felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill. Like that little Lego man, have you seen that picture of the Lego man? He's trying to roll a basketball up a hill. I would ask myself over and over again. What am I doing wrong? When I look back on how I ran campaigns then, versus now, I would come up with an idea. I'd send an email or two, I would put a post on social media and I would call that a campaign. I would dust it off and say, it is done. I want to look back now. It's no wonder so many of them flocked, right? I hadn't thought about who would get the promotion. Was it going to be my loyal customers, my VIPs or those bargain hunters? Truth be told, trying to segment a list when I first started in retail was literally a half a day event. Back in the day, we didn't have systems like Clavio. We had MailChimp and you would have to go in there and you would sort through the people and you would copy and paste them into different lists and you would be charged a fortune for them just to be able to segment. But these days, you've got no excuse. Segmentation and personalization are available with the click of a button. Here's the hard truth. It wasn't Facebook's ad platform. That was the problem. It wasn't Google's algorithm. It wasn't even the economy. I was the problem. I was throwing very expensive baguette marketing spaghetti at the wall with no real strategy behind it. Nothing was sticking because I wasn't sticking but you don't have to keep doing that. If you want to eat the bowl full of pasta rather than pick up the soggy doodles off the floor, here is my suggestion. Stop throwing the spaghetti at the wall. You need to stick and you need to stick with what works. So, let's just rewind and go back through that process again, shall we? Go back to step one. What has worked well in the past? Focus there. Don't move on just because you're bored. I've made that mistake before. I have pulled best selling products because I was bored of them. Would it bathtales for kids, anyone? Yeah, even when my customers were still asking for them, it took my team literally begging me for months to the point where they would write down how many people requested certain products before I relented. I mean, how stupid was that? I was literally throwing money at the door. It wasn't even a marketing campaign. We had people asking for these products and because I didn't want to sell them because I thought, would it baby towels were stupid? I wasn't serving my customers. So, here is the real plan. Analyze what has worked in the past. Spend some time digging through the data. Trust me when I say you will be very surprised at the results. Campaigns that you think work successful, when you really look into them, you might well see that sure, you only sent two emails, but the conversion rate on those was through the roof. You could have what I like to call a money fountain, write under your nose and not even know it. Step two, I want you to list out those 27 reasons why you think you can't do more of it. Now, 27 is my go-to number. In reality, it might be one, it might be five, it might be 10. I'm sure you can come up with a bunch of reasons why you think you can't do more of what works. Write them down, my friend. Every single excuse that you can think of. Step three, you are going to take that list and reverse engineer the obstacles. Is it that you need more hands on deck? Is it that you need to put more traffic on your site? Great, find the solutions. Maybe you need a new email arbiter, maybe you need a better agency, or maybe you just need someone to pack those orders, get them, you already know this work. So why would you not double down? Remember, this is an untapped money fountain. Step four, what a timeline on everything. Track your progress daily, weekly and monthly and always, always, debrief after each campaign. What worked, what didn't and why? If you ran this campaign again, what could you change and what would the results be? So step five, stop getting distracted. A product launch isn't just a quick email, it is a full sequence. Now for us, we say round about 18 emails backed up by social media, paid ads and maybe if you have a bricks and mortar store, some in-store activation. All of that is a campaign. A couple of posts, a couple of emails, no campaign. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is this, stop trying every shiny new things if you don't already have consistent sales and revenue coming in. Map out the entire customer journey, plan the budget, map out the resources you need and put KPIs in place and side note, if you are doing anything other than focusing your attention and resources on those things, then you are not doing your job as the CEO of your business. And stop jumping ahead by hiring people before you even build out processes for them to succeed. Because if you don't, you are going to keep throwing fast-cooked, very expensive spaghetti at the wall, crossing your fingers and hoping it will stick. And guess what, it probably won't. If you don't want to become resentful of your business or the money that you've poured into it, then do the work. Actually, do the work. Stick to what works. And remember, where focus goes, money flows. If you are struggling to build out your plan or to stay focused, let's talk. I would love to help you get unstuck and back on track. Until next time, eat the pasta, drink the wine and enjoy the freedom that owning your business gives you. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you on the next episode. So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action. If you're a social kind of person, follow me @thecelynandite and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and e-commerce stores, just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community and a win for your customers. I'll see you on the next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)
