A huge part of business is creating a strong product or service, building the foundations of your company, and operating efficiently. However, even if you have all of that in place, there’s something else you need – something that brings in the customers and cash. I’m of course talking about marketing.
Marketing is vital for business, and I often find that many companies don’t really know if their marketing efforts are enough. Things might seem ok, but there’s always that uncertainty of could you do more? Well, I want to eliminate that uncertainty and replace it with clarity and below I explain 6 signs that show you should invest more in your marketing!
1. Your Branding and Brand Message are Incohesive
Have you recently looked at your social media profiles and business website and noticed glaring differences? Or maybe your email campaign uses a completely different colour scheme to your landing pages?
If you are noticing snippets like this it could be an indication that your branding and brand message are incohesive, which in turn, could mean your marketing efforts are lacking.
It’s vital that all your marketing material and digital content projects a consistent brand image. This includes things like logo usage, colour schemes, layouts, and even the language you use. This extends to social media, emails, and your website too.
If your brand identity is fractured, then customers will struggle to identify with you and could become confused or mistrustful. If you invest in marketing and renew your efforts, you can get your brand image back on track.
2. Website Traffic and Enquiries are Trending Downwards
In an ideal world your website traffic and enquiries should either remain consistent or trend upwards – never downwards. There’s nothing worse than logging onto your Google Analytics account to see your metrics graphs trending downwards and your website traffic declining.
This could be a consequence of other factors, but in most instances, it is due to a lack in investment in marketing. SEO, PPC, social media, and email marketing can all contribute towards website traffic and if you don’t have those processes in place you can’t expect to maintain healthy traffic growth.
3. Competitors are Gaining the Upper Hand
Keeping tabs on competitors is part and parcel of business – all the top companies do it. Indeed, in the digital world there are a wealth of competitor analysis tools such as SEMrush and Social Blade that allow you to see how you rank in comparison with your industry equals.
Maybe you’ve done this yourself and noticed that your competitors are gaining a larger market share, or they rank higher than you on Google. If so, you can surmise that they are probably investing more in their marketing, and you need to do the same to catch up!
Without a concerted and consistent marketing effort, you will always be playing catch up to your competitors which ultimately means you lose out on potential business.
4. Your Website is Outdated With No New Content
A simple way to check if your company is investing in marketing is to look at your website. Is the information up to date? When was the last time the website was updated? When did you last publish a blog post or info on a new product release or change of service?
If the answer is more than a month then I would suggest that you need to invest in marketing. For most businesses today, their website is the primary means of advertisement so not updating it and keeping the content fresh could cause huge damage.
This starts with something simple like creating regular blog posts that provide useful and valuable information that actually helps and informs your customers and potential customers alike. By publishing a handful of well-written blogs with SEO optimised content each month, you can keep your website content ticking over, continually be adding value to your market and even be seen as the ‘go to’ experts in your industry. This marketing effort works in so many positive ways including boosting SEO and showing Google that you comply with the EEAT principle.
For info, E-E-A-T is an acronym from Google which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Supposedly, it is not a ranking factor but instead a component of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG). Way back in 2015, Google released a document called the ‘Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines’. It was designed to help Google’s human page evaluators assess web page quality so quite important, me thinks.
5. You Aren’t Securing New Customers
Oftentimes I find businesses are happy to “coast” with their existing client base. This is fine and of course you should always take very good care of your existing customers, but it’s always wise to look for additional customers and build on the foundations you have created.
If you are struggling to do this then your marketing efforts could be lacking. While what you offer in terms of services and products, your pricing, and your personality helps secure business, marketing plays an important role too.
This could be things like email marketing campaigns to potential new customers, social media campaigns to promote new product releases, or SEO campaigns to boost visibility on search engines for example.
6. You’re Getting Leads, But Not the Right Ones
Have you noticed that you seem to be getting plenty of enquiries and website traffic, but the prospects don’t actually need your products or services? This is a common occurrence in digital business – companies attracting the wrong customers.
This is a sign that you need to invest in marketing and that your current content and strategies aren’t aligned properly with your target demographic. Market research and a concerted investment in marketing can help target the right people – the people who actually need your products and/or services and are in the right location to get them. Building a detailed Customer Avatar will help with this as well as reviewing particular campaigns that are generating the wrong sort of enquiries.
Don’t Let Your Marketing Efforts Slack Off – Best Crack On and Invest!
If it wasn’t clear enough from this article, I believe strongly in the power of marketing and the benefits it can provide to any business and if you feel your marketing is lacking, then book a Free Strategy Meeting and we can how we can help you.
In the meantime, I want you to take a look at your business and look for the six signs I discussed above. If you notice any of them, it probably means that you need to invest more in your marketing and get your strategy back on track, especially if you want to grow your business going forward.
For help with your digital marketing, book a Free Strategy Session or call 0115 880 0211 for expert guidance and personalised solutions from our friendly team.
