How to Recover Quickly From a Marketing Miss

Every business owner has had a marketing experience where the time and money they invested didn’t produce the results they were expecting. There are three reasons why that happens:

• The message didn’t resonate with the audience
• The venue that delivered the message wasn’t the right fit for the audience
• An unanticipated event occurred that derailed the communication

The first two reasons are things you can control; the last reason is outside of your control. There are ways to recover from all three.

The Message

What you communicate in your marketing has to match the audience’s wants or needs.

I worked with a chiropractic office that was struggling to attract new clients. The professional staff was well-versed and trained in techniques and had great successes in alleviating pain from clients who had struggled for a long time. However, their marketing messages were about the very intricate details of chiropractic techniques, and they were over-communicating medically-written details that were difficult to understand. When a potential customer can’t understand what you’re saying, or you aren’t getting to the point quickly enough, they can’t feel confident in trusting you.

The Venue

The venue you choose to communicate your message needs to have your customers as its audience.

When I became an author, I joined every author and writer association I could find! I was excited to promote my book and wanted to be part of every community in publishing. These associations had social media channels, newsletters and events that promoted their member authors, and I was excited to participate in them. However, as I got to know the opportunities in more detail, I found that most were focused on fiction books. As a business book, I was in the nonfiction category.

This meant that I missed out on some of the marketing opportunities, such as book fairs, awards and promotions, because they targeted fiction readers. Their audience wasn’t going to reach my audience. This helped me choose associations that were specific to nonfiction book promotion.

It doesn’t matter if the membership cost is high or low, if the association is nationwide or regional. What matters is if it (the venue) connects to your audience.

The Unanticipated Event

From time to time, something unexpected will happen that throws your marketing plans off course. It might be a major news item that monopolizes the media, a canceled event that you had planned to attend or a mistake that causes you to miss the promotion. As a business owner, you already know that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control, and all you can do is adjust.

Here are some ways I have adjusted to those problems:

Missed Advertisement. An event forgot to include my client’s ad in their program. I asked if we could submit an article for their next newsletter that went out to all members. They agreed. The bonus for us was that every member received the newsletter, but not every member would have attended the event.

Event Cancellation. Bad weather caused everyone to cancel attending an advocacy event that had been planned for a client. We turned the presentation into a slideshow and included a video message and sent it out to everyone by email. We were also able to use elements of both for social media promotions for the next few months, something we wouldn’t have been able to do with the event as originally planned.

Consultant Fail. Sometimes you hire a consultant, and it just doesn’t work out. Maybe they aren’t as knowledgeable as you thought, or they can’t deliver on the timelines that you need. When this happens, take what you can from the experience and use it to onboard a consultant who is more in line with the way you want to work. You can always learn – something that moves you forward, or something you need to move forward with someone new.

Keep Moving Forward

Marketing is a constant in business, and it’s better to be consistently marketing than to have peaks and valleys. Like anything, if you have a miss, pick what you can learn from it and leave the rest behind as you keep moving forward.

Be intentional with your marketing decisions, and you’ll have better outcomes, even if you have a few misses.

Resources

Get thousands of dollars of advice in two easy books.

Forward Thinking for Your Business is geared to established businesses wanting to improve their marketing and is available on Amazon US and Amazon Canada, or contact Jennifer directly for bulk orders.

Forward Thinking for Future Entrepreneurs is focused on people looking to become business owners and who want to benefit from the advice of other entrepreneurs. Available on Amazon US and Amazon Canada, or contact Jennifer directly for bulk orders.

Work 1:1 with Jennifer. Email her at jennifer@fwdthink.ca or call 613-312-7824.