Ready-Fire-Aim Marketing And Why It Will Likely Blow Back On You

Too many businesses today practice Ready-Fire-Aim Marketing:

  1. They get some seemingly intelligent, point specific advice from a blog post / newsletter / trade association / colleague / brother-in-law (pick one).
  2. They spend little time understanding the advice (who can invest time to think things through when we need leads!) and whether it’s their most critical problem (it was important to this other guy who we know nothing about so it must be important to our business right?)
  3. They quickly try to implement the suggestion (who needs experience and expertise when we can read 1 or 2 help pages?)
  4. They’re unhappy with the result, so next time some seemingly intelligent advice appears, they’re onto the new fad and start the cycle again.

The truth is that changing human behavior (also known as Marketing) is damn hard and very complex, so to be done well, it requires thoughtful strategies, plans and goals carried out by experienced practitioners who are correctly motivated.

Another problem with this scattershot approach is that marketing’s many different tactics are dependent on each other so to act on one point specific tactic alone is often a recipe for failure. For example, even if you got the best advertising advice in the world from Mr. Adwords himself, if your website is poorly designed or you have no content to offer ad clickers in return for their email address, you are likely going to waste your ad money (i.e., because advertising’s effectiveness depends not just on advertising but on how well it “integrates” with all the other marketing tactics you’re using). So to be effective, your tactics can’t be handled in isolation, you need an integrated, comprehensive approach.

This is made much harder by the recent explosion of sales and marketing tactics, and the vendors that sell them. ChiefMartec.com has reported a doubling of the number of sales & marketing providers in one year, growing to 1, 876 vendors across 43 categories:

So what’s a business owner to do? It’s not like you can call any one of these 1, 876 vendors and ask what they think you should do (because, not surprisingly, the SEO firms will tell you SEO is the solution to all your problems, the ad agencies will say advertising, PR firms, PR and so on).

Instead, you need a firm that’s thinking about it from your perspective (what are your business’ lowest hanging needs) not what tactic they sell (SEO, advertising, PR). And while it’s great to be open to new advice as you encounter it (even from your brother-in-law), and there is a role for “gut instinct”, there is no substitute for having a comprehensive, integrated sales & marketing plan implemented, and continuously improved upon, by a skilled team motivated to grow your sales.

Two Solutions that Prevent Marketing Fails

Sales Renewal’s two growth solutions-the JointSourcing Solution and the Marketing Essential Solution-overcome the challenges that too often cause small business marketing to fail. Both begin by developing a growth plan specific to your business and both provide all the people, expertise and tools needed to implement the plan and grow your sales without you having to pay their full-time cost in salaries, benefits or management time.

And unlike Inbound Marketing firms or single-tactic vendors who have a vested interest in their specific approach, Sales Renewal is a Marketing General Contractor that can deliver all possible marketing strategies & tactics. Sales Renewal’s only bias then is towards the quickest and most cost effective ways to grow your sales.

JointSourcing Solution(“joint venture” + “insourcing”) is a comprehensive strategy, marketing and technology solution that insources all the expertise (drawn from across the entire sales & marketing spectrum) in just the right proportions your business needs. This team handles all the day-to-day marketing and technology work that grow leads and sales (and demands so much of your time now), while Sales Renewal shares with you its management, and a portion of the rewards and risks (similar to a joint venture).

Marketing Essentials Solution™ is a easy-to-adopt, guided marketing and technology solution that grows small businesses. It is tailored to your specific business to deliver the essential mix of the marketing tactics & programs and sales-enabling technology that all businesses need to increase leads and sales (and includes online advertising and search engine optimization).

Sales Renewal’s insight:

Too many businesses today practice Ready-Fire-Aim Marketing.

Learn why:

  • Going with your gut can be very expensive
  • “Do it yourself” is not the way to grow your sales
  • There are almost no vendors who you can ask for help and trust their answers
4 minutes read