Creating and co-ordinating all your marketing activity is not easy. I don’t need to tell you that. You know how long it takes to come up with the ideas, put them into action and get things happening.
It can get to feel like a hamster on the wheel, and constantly on the go.
Do you remember why you’re on the wheel?
Sometimes we get so busy on the doing that we forget why we started doing those things. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that you set out to find more customers, to engage more with real people who might be interested in what you do, and ultimately to turn them into people who will pay for what you do or offer.
Sometimes you’ve got so busy in the activity, you forget to do the next step.
How to make sure you get no return on your investment
I’m in the process of moving house, so in the market for some different things to my every day purchases. It was brilliant timing for a local removal firm to have put their postcard through my front door. I don’t think that part was targeted, the whole road seemed to get one.
I rang them to try and get them across to come and quote.
Answerphone.
Not great, but it happens. People have to step away from their desks, or are on the other line. Perhaps lots of people had got the card and wanted quotes.
Perhaps the other people are not still waiting for a call back. A week later.
I’m booking someone else.
The two critical things with marketing activity
Once you’ve released your content, on any channel, you have to be ready to do two more things:
- Follow up
- Follow through
Not rocket science, but you can see how the removal firm failed on both counts. It does depend on the call to action you’ve put in place, but in most circumstances you’re going to need to do at least one of these, if not both.
You can see how in the case of the removal firm that neither was really happening. The money spent on the cards and the delivery of them was not optimised in terms of return.
Follow up and follow through
If you’re making time to create content of any kind, then you need to be making time for the follow up. Don’t say you’re too busy. Stop doing some creating and marketing activity if you can’t maximise the impact of it, and make people not regret, or forget, their decision to engage with what you do.
Get it right from the start
Take a look at your email sign up. Does it tell the story of you, or just the standard story of your email provider?
And what do you do afterwards?
The best time to cement their interest in what you do is when they first show some interest. The best email sign up sequences do useful things, like share useful content you’ve already created, or interesting things about what you do. Don’t just leave them hanging until you next do something.
I help clients with this, to make sure that people really get what you do and why from the start. As I’ve written before with blog content, showing up consistently is key, and the same thing applies to your email contact. And email lists are the things your business owns, not your followers on a social media network that can disappear with the tweak of the algorithm.
Start following up now
Like many things in life, it’s never too late to start following up. Okay, that’s not entirely true. If it’s a year since you were in touch, then it’s probably too late. But you can make sure that the same piece of content now has some sort of follow up, and that you follow through.
Keep a track on your stats and see what it does for you. I hope you get to see a positive upturn in your key measures. Keep following up on your follow up.
