Marketing is a critical lifeline for any business. It helps identify, attract, satisfy and keep customers. So we asked creative professionals in the marketing realm: What’s a key marketing element most businesses neglect?

Geoff Wilson
President/CEO, 352 Media Group

“Most businesses forget to share their ‘why’ — the reason why they exist, what they believe in, what they stand for and where they are going. Tell your story, share your personality, let your customers get to know what you are all about. If you’re fuzzy on your own company’s ‘why,’ then you need to fix that and reconnect with the reason why the company was started to begin with. Learn the story and tell it to the world. It gives your brand a personality and people who believe what you believe will love your company as a result.

“I highly recommend reading Simon Sinek’s book ‘Start With Why.’ He does an excellent job of explaining how some companies, like Apple and Harley Davidson, have had tremendous marketing success because their entire brand embodies what they believe in.”

Follow Geoff @Geoff352

Tim Wall
Director of Marketing, LightCMS

“Goal tracking. While many business engage in online advertising and track things like click-through rates and website visits, few take the time to establish measurable goals and evaluate their marketing efforts based on cost per conversion. Cost per conversion is much more important than cost per impression or cost per click. Cost per conversion accounts for all marketing variables and tells you exactly how effective your marketing efforts are.

“To measure cost-per-conversion, you have to have a trackable goal on your website. There has to be something measurable that you clearly want your website visitor to do and that action must represent real value to your business. The trick is setting up the right goals, but once that’s accomplished, measuring cost per conversion is easy and will help ensure your marketing dollars are spent in the most efficient means possible.”

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Mark Hobbs
Partner, Denote

“I think a key element that people neglect when marketing is to think like your customer. It is extremely important to consider the impact of each marketing effort and when and where the customer will be when it impacts them.

“Many businesses neglect to start marketing, especially with things like search engine optimization, thinking that it can be started later. By the time they realize they should have started last month, so it could take effect by now, they already expect results. Set clear consistent marketing goals and walk through your own experience as if you were a customer.”

Follow Mark @denotecom

Mustafa Demir
Founder & Creative Director, Freshmark Design & Branding

“Most companies are aware of the importance of brand positioning, having fresh market research data and knowing their target audience. In terms of online marketing, however, usability testing and conversion optimization usually don’t get the recognition they deserve.

“As important as having an outstanding design, a unique value proposition, a relevant-to-source product/service offering with clear call-to-action items, testing efficiency and making adjustments based on findings usually brings far greater value than the initial investment.

“Looking at how intricate they can get might be exciting, however, collecting stats alone doesn’t help improving the bottom line. At the end, if you don’t perform tests and measure the results comparatively it’s impossible to know if you’re realizing the true potential of your brand.”

Follow Mustafa @freshmark

Bryan Stuart
Principal & Creative Director, Sprout Creative

“I think a key marketing element that is often overlooked is the ability of your employees to really nail down the elevator pitch. It’s important that the people who live and breath as a representation of your company can fully understand who you are and what it is that you do. Then be able to concisely and effectively deliver that message in a very short conversation. You never know where your next job can come from!

“We do a lot of online work and we often see a huge neglect in web content management. We’re approached by excited clients wanting a website that is a robust CMS with latest news updates and social media marketing opportunities, etc. They want it all but don’t have the resources to manage it. A year later, the site is stagnant and basically exactly how we left it. It’s important to have a long-term strategic plan for the management of this content in place to really capitalize on what you can do with it.”

Follow Bryan @bryanstuart

Jeromy Stallings
Internet Marketing Director, Ninthlink

“Marketing on the internet is a little bit like a game of cat and mouse. You are always chasing after new traffic sources and figuring out innovative ways of converting that traffic into a sale or lead. Yet, this is not where many businesses fail! They fail because they do not put in the proper tracking and reporting tools to give insight to what is working and not working.

“So many times I walk into a clients office and ask them for a breakdown website traffic sources and conversion rates by source. And many times I walk away empty handed. Don’t get me wrong here — setting up proper tracking and reporting for all your traffic and conversion points is not the easiest job in the world! But, once setup, the real fun begins!

Follow Jeromy @jeromystallings

 

Agree? Disagree? What do you feel are the key marketing elements most businesses neglect?