Over the last few months, we've been engaged with clients who felt pressure from senior management, board members, and even investors to "do something" with their marketing. It can be a huge challenge to push back on impatient constituents who see competitors running glitzy ad campaigns.
Add the fact that almost everyone thinks they are an expert on advertising, and you have a tough situation for marketing professionals who know better than to rush something out the door for the sake of "doing something."
The costs of developing a marketing campaign without understanding some fundamental basics are huge. At Mythology, we describe these fundamentals as the Ten Pillars of Meaningful Marketing, and we advise clients with all our might to follow them. It's a rare effective marketing team who can maintain the discipline to take care of first things first.
Without a deep understanding of customer felt and expressed needs, message development can only be guesswork. Without message testing, the guesswork is expensive indeed in the form of lower response rates or awareness levels. Without prioritizing which customer segments are most relevant, marketing messages tend to be too broad and fall flat in a world where each consumer is hit with 3,000 messages a day. Even the purchase of direct mail lists can go way off kilter without answers to basic questions on who you are truly targeting.
So before you cave under the pressure, or get excited by the creative process, take a step back. Review the Ten Pillars and challenge yourself to nail some basic questions before you go down the campaign development path.
We have a simple assessment tool that might help. If you're interested, just drop us a line at info@mythologymarketing.com.
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