I have been fortunate to have worked with many organizations regarding their marketing communications activities over the years.

Some of them have been from the inside. Working on the internal team.

Many of them have been coming in as a third-party, a fresh set of eyes, the consultant.

The reasons why an organization may not be succeeding in their marketing is too numerous to list.

There have been so many different types of scenarios. But there are two main ones I have encountered when diagnosing what isn’t working for a given client.

TYPE A CLIENT

Many times, the internal team have not spent the time to define their positioning with clarity and what direction they should be facing or what they should be doing on a day to day, mid-term or long-term basis. Without clarity across the team, the default is to drift to vanity-based or non-impactful activities.

This client scenario usually is very opportunistic in decision making. There is no clearly defined strategy, and furious frenetic activity is confused with focused actions.

Usually this client feels overwhelmed. They can’t get consistent fractionation across the board. They have tried so many different tactics they are tired. Think hamster on a wheel. (Did you know hamster can run up to 8 hours on a hamster wheel overnight?)

Type A communicators might be writing a daily blog, but the topics, and either lack of or over-repetitiveness might not be reinforcing the appropriate relevance to the audience. Or they are spending ads to drive traffic to something they haven’t optimized to convert and convince.

They need help.

And as an outside consultant we can assess the situation, help them determine which audience(s) they want to target, define which results they want in the end, and then build a marketing communications plan to help attract and engage.

Usually architecting a unified plan gives the team freedom and more importantly a roadmap to go from point A to point B.

TYPE B CLIENT

But – Sometimes it seems like they’re doing the right thing, but they’re not getting the right results.

While they say “an educated consumer makes the best customer,” sometimes it can be self-defeating.

That’s because they may have enough knowledge, just enough, in order to be dangerous.

Type B communications might be strategic enough to install a set of marketing activities that will bring a person to a website, but there isn’t the right spectrum of content for a visitor to consistently make a decision in favor of taking the right next step.

In these scenarios, usually we find that they have started to do some of the activities that are needed to convert first time visitors in to engage the community members. But SOME is not enough. It allows you to be SOMEWHAT successful, but not surely successful.

SO WHAT’S MISSING?

Over the years, I have been able to work with the whole spectrum of client base. One thing that I have clearly began to understand is that what makes for success or failure IS NOT if they are executing one, two, three or more tactics successfully.

In my experience, the issue is that they have not installed all the systems necessary across the board that intentionally moves a prospect down the funnel into an assimilation pathway that indoctrinates, converts and equips them to refer others back.

A COMPLETE SYSTEM

After years of experience I’ve confirmed the frustration comes from one critical thing IMHO.

There is no end-to-end complete marketing system installed that is working to target, attract and engage the audience.

Rewards go to the diligent communicator who stitches together complete intended pathway for prospect to turn into a visitor to turn into a repeat attender.

Do you have marketing activities for the entire journey?

The framework my team uses has three key pillars: Target, Attract and Engage.

In addition, there are three key strategies that support each of these three pillar objectives.

I’ll be talking more about this signature system for digital marketing, so that you can better understand how to weave together an entire system and process to bring people into the mix and and turn first time visitors into repeat attenders.

WHERE ARE YOU STARTING?

In the meantime, I would love to hear which of the 3 key areas TARGET, ATTRACT, ENGAGE do you need the most help with currently?