The answer can be that you ARE doing the right thing, but not to the right segment, or your timing is off, or the tactic is being done correctly, but strategically it doesn't make sense for what you're trying to accomplish.
Take for instance this case: a telecommunications company purchased an email list. They spent a significant portion of their marketing budget on the list cost & it failed. Why? Email acquisition will almost always bomb - especially in the B2B segment because email lists are sold at a premium making break-even more difficult & because filters are often so tight, nothing gets through.
Or the entrepreneur who spent far too much on local newspaper advertising to announce a new product but his potential market was such a small segment of his existing customers, that this killed his budget & bombed too.
In each stage of the marketing process, different elements come in to play.
Acquisition - All new businesses are in acquisition mode. This is where you'll acquire customers for the first time. To do this, you must choose the right tactical marketing moves to let your target audience know you exist.
Retention - Once you have customers, you must try to keep them. It costs up to 10x more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one, so retention should become part of any business's marketing activities.
Reactivation - This is a sub-segment of the elements above. For myriad reasons a customer may stop buying from you. Depending on what your product is & why they stopped, a good portion can often be reactivated to become viable customers again.
During my tenure in corporate marketing departments I learned that true marketing-oriented organizations have each of these elements as part of their marketing arsenal. This is what makes them a success. Tho the numbers & budgets may be far bigger than a small business can afford, the strategies & tactics can be easily implemented by adapting them to fit your small business marketing needs.
Make marketing a priority for 2016 & you're well on your way to success.
Happy Marketing!
Copyright 2015 Affordable Marketing Solutions LLC
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