No, I haven’t paraphrased content from other blogs. This comes from my personal experience.

How I learnt that “Not every company will fit into your marketing template”.

Learn why our go-to marketing channels are not giving us enough ROI as we expect.

Unlike my other “medium stories”, this one is different. No, I’m not saying that I don’t share my opinions in the other stories but yes I can’t deny that rarely I express the strong ones.

So, I want to talk to you about the daily marketing practices that we as marketers follow. How and why our go-to marketing channels are not giving us enough ROI as we expect and I promise, all that I’m going to be sharing today will be from my personal experiences in the industry.

Jumping from an Associate to a Marketing Manager in just 6 months, undeniably I’ve had a huge learning curve. But what was interesting was that every company I have worked with till now has proven one thing to me.

“ Not every company will fit into your marketing template”.

Meaning? Simple.

Every company has its unique culture, unique standing and a USP. The marketing channels that might have worked for your previous companies might not and I quote “might/will not work for your present company”.

And how did I learn this, when I switched roles, I was full of energy, trying to get a strategy together. I spent hours on discovery calls with reps of listing sites, influencers and marketing managers, only to sit down with the founder of my company and hear the words “ Aanya, focus. Not every company will fit into your marketing template”.

And trust me, that calmed me down. It might sound cliched but it was an eye-opener and suddenly I was clear on what my priorities were.

All I had to do was, ask myself two things- What are my priorities? And what strategies should I ruthlessly prioritize to get this done?

Well, coming back to the point, we’ve all somewhere in our journey acknowledged the fact that most of our marketing channels, including content marketing such as blogs, podcasts, etc. are no more the differentiators in the market. They’ve become a necessity to survive.

But now comes the thought that if others are doing it, they must be witnessing some ROI. This is subjective darling and I won’t even go down that road. Because most and I mean it, most companies out there might be generating 50 leads using a blog but how many of them are actually relevant?

Having 2000 downloads of a guide does not mean having 2000 marketing qualified leads. And chances are that out of those 2000, only 5 or 10 are qualified. That’s an extremely low number. But again, there are nuances to this as well. For eg, with each lead your ticket size is about $30,000, even those 5 leads would eventually become a good number (quite true for the B2B Saas companies). Hence these B2B companies including Hubspot and Zapier are big on content marketing.

Next, you might consider the most popular strategy, not only in the B2C world but also in the B2B world- Influencer Marketing. I was big on these and honestly some part of me, still is. It’s an extremely engaging strategy and can create wonders on your social media, help you create brand awareness, help you with recognition and whatnot. But only when the timing is right and you’re doing something that cuts through the noise (which I must acknowledge is not so easy).

With so much noise in the industry, so many people utilising the same tactics including Vlogs, video and audio podcasts, Twitter chats, it has become incredibly difficult to gain the attention of your audience. And we’re all aware of the short attention span that customers have and the selective attention mechanisms that we as consumers have set in place as we consume tons of relevant and irrelevant information on a daily basis.

But this doesn’t mean that Influencer marketing doesn’t work. All I mean to say is that the right timing is the key and presenting something that is relevant, unique and different might help you cut through the clutter.

So, wait what exactly am I suggesting?

I am suggesting that we all as professionals keep pitching these ideas to our companies and clients, but often we forget that the key is timing. The key is to understand your customer’s journey, their buyer behaviour and then customizing your strategies in a way that allows you to impact different touchpoints of your customer’s journey. This is when you’ll be able to drive ROI.

Acknowledge the fact that each company is different and so is their customer.

Each customer journey will be different. The key is to create an impact on those as many times as possible to cut through the clutter and really create an impression in their mind.

And finally focus, while the world is full of possibilities, devote time and effort in maybe just two things to reach your objective. And even if you fail, you’ll learn.

Feel free to share something that adds a fresh perspective or simply share your thoughts in the comments below.