It’s easy to believe you know what your audience likes to read, watch or experience. But without a reliable data source to support those ideas, marketing strategies often miss their objectives. The result is misspent dollars in areas like inaccurate market targeting and inefficient spending.
Intuition may be your greatest enemy. For example, you notice that another company is seeing incredible success utilizing a particular social media platform. You dive in, investing in similar contests, polls and posts that imitate the other company’s success. Two months in, the analytics don’t support continued investment; your audience simply doesn’t spend time on that platform. However, because your gut is telling you that it should work, you double down on the investment and continue spending money on tactics with no data to support them.
That is a common mistake. If you don’t measure the cost of poor marketing, you may continue to miss opportunities and their associated revenue.
Sneaky Offenders: Where the Cost of Poor Marketing Often Hides
A higher customer acquisition cost and misalignment of marketing strategies with company goals are clear-cut, obvious areas where mistakes in marketing create additional costs or waste resources. There are also many additional areas where marketing becomes costly. These hidden costs often aren’t noticed if you aren’t experienced.
Low Click-Through Rate: Also known as CTR, this measures what all marketers are after—getting a member of the target audience to click on an ad, call-to-action button or link. It’s measured by taking the total clicks divided by the number of impressions, then multiplying by 100.
Inefficiency and Wasted Time: Gartner estimates that while media comprises about 21% of the average marketing budget, labor is a stunning 48%. If companies are not making the most of their teams’ time and talents, they could be unknowingly wasting a significant portion of their resources.
From inefficient or undocumented processes to underutilized tools, missed deadlines and the tendency to rearrange work rather than complete it, an internal marketing team has the capacity to cost the company a lot of opportunities.
Brand Confusion: This is a hard area to quantify, but the erosion of brand identity through inconsistent messaging, muddled color schemes and even varying tone of voice in communications can lead to a lack of brand awareness and loss of market presence. While you may understand the cost of developing a brand identity, they may not realize the cost of slowly allowing it to wear down.
How to Fix It: Exploring Solutions and Best Practices
If you recognize the opportunity and monetary costs of poor marketing choices, you can begin to turn that around by following a strategic plan with consistent, intentional marketing designed to improve revenue. Rather than relying on guesswork or sporadic campaigns, a well-structured approach ensures that every marketing effort aligns with your business objectives and delivers maximum return on investment. At SJC Marketing, our team partners with you to develop and execute high-value strategies grounded in research, data insights and creative innovation. We can help you strengthen your brand, reach the right audience, and achieve sustainable, long-term success. Contact us today to get started.