What You Learn From Working With Businesses Across the South
Marketing gets people to your front door. Everything else determines whether they stay.
I spend a lot of time sitting across from people while they tell me they need marketing.
Usually, they say it as if they're looking for a quick-fix band-aid. The mindset is that a viral social media post, a beautiful website, or a great video is somehow going to automatically create hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.
And almost every time, I ask the same question: "What happens after someone finds you?"
Because the post is simply the first interaction someone has with your brand. They watch the video and click the link to your website. Then what?
When they land there, do they know within five seconds what you do and how you can help them? Do they know exactly what action to take next? How long does it take for someone to hear back from you once they reach out? What happens after that conversation? And then after that?
Most businesses haven't spent enough time looking at the entire customer journey. Where are the missed opportunities to tell customers about everything you offer? Where are the gaps in communication? Where are the places people get frustrated, confused, or fall through the cracks
Whatever problem you're solving, does your customer clearly understand how you're going to make their life better? Then let's talk about sales.
Marketing is important. I make a living in marketing. But marketing is not sales. Sales is not customer service. Customer service is not operations.
Yet somehow we expect marketing to fix all of it.
One of my favorite statistics says that 80% of sales require five or more follow-ups, yet nearly half of salespeople stop after the first attempt. Think about that.
We blame marketing for not generating enough leads while the opportunities we've already paid for never receive a second phone call. Research has also shown that nearly 70% of marketing-generated leads are never pursued by sales teams.
That's not a marketing problem. That's a systems problem. A process problem.
The organizations I see winning right now are willing to do the unsexy work. They're willing to lift the hood and look at the entire experience.
The process maps. The mystery shopping. The difficult conversations. The cleaning up of things nobody on Facebook will ever see.
Because marketing gets people to your front door. Everything else determines whether they stay, buy, come back, and tell their friends.
