Sometimes you need to take the gloves off.
To state the bold truth.
And with any luck the truth will offend someone or at least create disagreement — because that’s a sign you have a chance to change.
In Rogue’s earlier days, we worked with several clients who would say things like, “I don’t think we’re getting leads from our website or Google ads. But our outdoor signage is doing great!” They declined to invest in CRM and email automation that would have enabled an ability to create attribution and closed-loop marketing. They didn’t care for call tracking. They just “felt” that their signage was doing better, and that’s how they were making business decisions.
(Insert #facepalm here.)
You need to know 2 things:
Here are five reasons why:
It’s shocking to even say it, but organizations today are still pitting digital marketing against outdoor marketing and mailers…as if there weren’t a direct and constant loop between a sign and your digital presence.
We’ve got news for you: Every single one of us—including you—has hopped on a smartphone while standing in a retail store to price compare, read reviews, etc. Nothing gets more personal than picking up a product, putting it in our cart, and walking to the checkout…and yet we still incorporate digital. If we do that for a pair of shoes, you can bet your audience is doing it for your business.
But because you see digital, signage, in-store, and other forms of marketing as separate budgets and strategies, you aren’t taking the right steps to create closed-loop marketing. Without closed-loop marketing, you have no attribution, and you have no way to guide your leads from awareness content (like signage) down the purchase path to make sure they exchange money for your product or service.
Old-school professionals are enamored of their signage customers (however they choose to define them) because they are people who come in today. But by creating a closed-loop marketing circuit, you know exactly who’s interested in your product or service because they interacted with you. And when you track those people, how they came in and what they need before they can purchase, you have the ability nurture them along.
Whether you’re selling inventory, intellectual property, or even healthcare services, you are ignoring a major revenue source by not capturing and nurturing leads for months and even years at a time.
There was a time you could bring in all the customers you needed with relatively little effort. But as time goes on, you realize that customers aren’t coming in at the same pace. Whether the “newness” of your campaign has worn off or the market has moved on, you realize that what got you to this point won’t get you to the next stage of business growth.
An integrated digital marketing strategy helps you identify peaks and valleys, gathers data on what might be the cause, and opens new channels to get you through slow periods.
Of all the people in your available audience, only 1% are considering services like yours. Of those, 10% are actively looking. Of those, only 5% are trying to make a purchase within the week. That’s .005% (optimistically speaking) of your available audience ready to purchase right now.
Your leads are coming to you at various stages—and if you’re relying heavily on signage or mailers, then you are more likely to engage with someone in the awareness phase, because they weren’t thinking about you until they saw your sign and decided to begin a process. If you’re not getting enough customers from the leads you’re generating, you aren’t guiding them down the conversion path (buyer journey) to make a purchase. That’s not a marketing problem—that’s a sales and conversion problem.
You came to a point where you wanted to grow your business. Your old marketing and sales tactics weren’t getting you where you wanted to go. So you expanded your reach by adding more digital efforts. Cutting your digital marketing at the sign of a slowdown is not a guarantee to make you go faster or even save your bottom line (no matter how high your retainer may be). Cutting your digital marketing is going back to the problems that brought you to digital marketing in the first place.
The internet isn’t going away, and your customers depend on your digital properties to get quality information that helps them make decisions and reach their personal goals.
There’s a mantra at Rogue: What got you here won’t get you there. If you’re still keeping your digital marketing in a silo, it’s time to make the investments in quality tracking, CRM, and automation to close the loop on marketing efforts to increase your revenue opportunities next year from the leads you generate today.
The Rogue Buyer Journey Template is a tool you can download to help you consider the many assets you’ll need to be successful at different stages in the buying process. Laying this foundation makes the rest of your work more efficient.
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