What’s the Silver Bullet?

Is there a Marketing Silver Bullet? 

In the age of instant gratification, it’s understandable that you might expect to wave a magic wand and see your marketing strategy and tactics fall into place yielding instant and excellent results.

But that’s not reality.

Marketing is not one-size-fits-all. There is no silver bullet. No magic wand. (Although when you choose the right partner to handle your marketing strategy and implementation, they’re sure to have a little magic up their sleeves.) Every business has a different audience and a different message to communicate. Determining how to disseminate your message depends on what is best for you and your audience. Not what everyone else is doing. Often that means testing tactics until you find the one that works best.

So how can you get the return on investment that you’re looking for? Let’s break down some of the FAQs we get about marketing tactics and how to decide what’s best for your organization.

Do I need printed marketing materials? The short and simple answer to this is “no” for small businesses. Like everything, there are some exceptions to this rule but if printed materials are needed, they’re limited. But if you have a large budget, printed materials may be a nice addition to your other marketing tools. But it’s not necessary. And let’s be honest, most small businesses aren’t working with a slush fund for marketing.

The key is to optimize what budget you do have for the audience you’re trying to reach. Figure out what activities and marketing tactics will make the best use of your limited budget. Fuse can help you maximize your budget for big results.

How do I know what’s working? Tracking, insights, feedback, and measurements are essential in identifying the marketing tactics that work best for your business.

When is it time to try something different? What feedback are you getting from your sales team? What do the metrics show for your digital campaigns? One benefit to electronic and digital marketing is that it takes very little time to find out whether a particular activity is working for you. That means you’ll waste less money on what’s not working and be able to quickly shift your budget to the tactics that are working. Studying metrics and benchmarks for various marketing activities helps you gauge how well your efforts are performing. Knowing these benchmarks will also help you manage your expectations. Here are a few examples of industry averages on well-implemented campaigns:

Who is my audience and where do I find them? Let me start by saying this: your audience is not everyone. If you’ve been putting your efforts toward broad marketing to reach anyone and everyone, it’s time to take a step back and narrow down the audience that will most be impacted by your message. Who will be the easiest sale? Knowing who your audience is gives you the first piece of information needed to determine where to reach them. Fuse will work with you to identify your goals and develop a marketing strategy that is fine tuned to reach your audience and get the maximum ROI.

What’s the first step? When we start working with a new client, we conduct a full assessment of their existing marketing strategy and tactics. What things does the client know need some work? We may or may not agree on where to start, but we will work together to develop a plan to help you accomplish your goals.

Many of our clients have what we call “foundational debt,” referring to the need to clean up infrastructure and processes in order to get the results they’re looking for. The money spent on foundational debt may not lead to direct sales, but it is essential.

If you want to build a marketing strategy that works, one that gets results, you must have a solid foundation in place. That means everything from your website to your branding and content must be on point. This isn’t the sexy part of marketing. It’s not exactly the fun stuff, but Fuse is committed to helping our clients clean up the past and get on track for the future.

Are you ready to launch a marketing campaign, or is it time to take a serious look at what you’ve been doing — what’s working and what’s not — and start spending your money where you’ll get the most value? Give us a call today to get started.