Diagnosis Marketing (What really helps get marketing results?)

Are you still stuck in trial and error when it comes to your marketing?

In this episode, Victoria shares a personal medical story that sparked a powerful insight into why so many businesses end up just "ruling things out" rather than building marketing that really works. 

She explores:

• Why results alone are a poor diagnostic tool
• How to spot early signals of momentum
• What it really takes to move from guesswork to a revenue-ready marketing system.

Diagnosing your marketing is key.

That way you can build a successful lead generation system.

Grab free templates, checklists and guides at allstarmarketingclub.com/resources - everything you need to market smarter, not harder.

About Victoria: Marketing Coach & Trainer Victoria Vickery serves up marketing advice with fewer buzzwords, more belly laughs, and stories you’ll never un-hear... because memorable marketing starts with memorable lessons.

For More Tales, Tips & Tangents:  @victoriav1ckery

Transcript

0:00

When something doesn't work, people assume the whole thing is wrong and it needs throwing away. The offer's wrong, the platform's wrong, the audience is wrong, and perhaps marketing just doesn't work for me. But usually only one part needs adjusting, and if you're measuring impact, then you can normally work out exactly what that is and why. Welcome to what's that Got To Do With Marketing, where we start with a story you did not see coming. It might be fun, could be funny, or even a little bit frantic, but in the end it will all make sense, leaving you with a takeaway a to do or a transformational way forward. And I'm your host, Victoria, and you, my friend, are here for unlikely lessons and unforgettable marketing advice. Just for small B2B expert led business owners. Let's get into it. This episode is called Diagnosis Marketing. Now, over the last month or so, I've been back and forth to hospital. A quick spoiler alert. I'm absolutely fine, I haven't died. And this isn't about to turn into one of those very serious, reflective moments where everything goes a bit quiet. So nothing dramatic to report, nothing particularly scary, but lots of appointments, tests, scans, GP visits, hospital visits, more appointments and then waiting. And that's what's been really interesting about the whole thing. What I found out about the entire process is this much of the time with medical appointments, it's more about ruling out what isn't rather than what actually is. And it takes quite a lot to get a diagnosis because of this whole ruling out thing. And quite honestly, that's far more frustrating than I actually expected it to be, because ruling things out takes time. It's slow, it start, stop, you go back to your gp, you get referred, you wait again, you go to hospital, you wait some more, you rule something out and then you move on to the next thing. And while that's all happening, life doesn't just pause nicely in the background. It in my case, I was on enforced bed rest for a week. I couldn't work, I couldn't help out at home, I couldn't do the things that I normally do. And everything else had to adjust around this long, slightly annoying process of elimination. So what's that got to do with marketing? Well, at some point, laying there doing absolutely nothing, I had one of those moments where you think, hang on a minute, this feels very, very familiar. Because this is exactly what I see so many businesses doing with their marketing. Not diagnosing what will work, but instead constantly ruling out what doesn't. Then Try something new. It doesn't quite land, so they stop. They post consistently for a little bit. Nothing obvious happens. So they change direction, launching something and it being a lot quieter than they'd hoped. So they assume that that offer is actually wrong, or LinkedIn doesn't work, or email marketing's dead, or people just aren't buying right now. And before long, marketing starts to feel slow, frustrating and quite frankly, exhausting. Not because nothing works, but because everything feels like a long process of elimination. Ruling things out one by one with disappointing results. And just like with health, that process doesn't only affect one area. It affects your confidence, doesn't it? It affects momentum, it affects decision making, it affects the way you price what you offer. Because perhaps you stop valuing yourself quite so much. It affects how much energy you've got left to keep showing up in your business and trying. And here's the bit that I really want you to hear. In medicine, ruling things out is necessary, but it's not the end goal. The goal is clarity. The goal is direction and actually having a plan that moves you forward. And your marketing should be exactly the same. If you're stuck in a place where your marketing feels like a list of things you've tried rather than a system that actually works, you're not broken is the good news. You're not bad at marketing, and you're definitely not alone. You're just stuck in a place of trial and error, of hope and perhaps waiting far too long to decide whether or not something that you've got going on in your marketing world is actually working. What changes everything for you is when you move into a place of revenue ready marketing where you're not actually guessing anymore, you're not throwing things out prematurely and you're not relying on those lagging results to tell you whether you're on the right track or not. But instead, you know what each part of your marketing is meant to do, and you know all of those signals to look out for. And when something isn't at actually working for you, you know what to fix and actually what you can then abandon. So if you're feeling like your marketing is taking too long to get results, if it feels heavier than it should, or if you're quietly wondering, well, what am I doing wrong? You need to hear this episode. Because today we're talking about how to move out of that rule out marketing, and into a system that gives you clarity, gives you confidence, and that momentum that we all need to succeed in marketing. But not by doing more, but by building Something that actually works for you. Now, how do you stop guessing and start getting the answers faster? And the answer isn't more tactics, it's better diagnosis. So I'm going to go through now several different points of things that you can actually work on to, to make your marketing more successful. So first of all, I want you to decide the job before the marketing activity. Now, most marketing doesn't fail, it just doesn't have a clear job. So before you post, email, launch or show up anywhere, you need to answer one question. What is it meant to do? Not vaguely, no, not things like it needs to raise awareness or we'll put it out there and see what happens. But specifically, is this meant to start a conversation? Is it warming people up? Is it there to create urgency? Is it to convert them now or is it to support them in some other way? Now, if you decide what that job is first, you can then diagnose what's going to work or whether it's working for you. But if you don't decide that job first, you. You can't diagnose whether it's working because you have not set up anything for you to measure. You just rule it out when you get bored or when perhaps you get impatient, which I see so much. But here's the thing, you can't fix what you never defined. And by working on what your marketing needs to achieve first, you'll be able to choose the right approach. Now, I was in my LinkedIn feed just recently scrolling on through whilst on my bed rest and I have to say I was seeing an absolute pile of shite. In most instances it's a case of I just need to get something out there. But if there is no reason or job behind that actual piece of content, it's not going to pull its weight and ultimately it's going to be disappointing and it's not going to serve a purpose for you. That's the first thing to do, create a job for your marketing before you just put things out there and hope for the best. Secondly, once your marketing is actually out there, I want you to look for the signals, not just sales. I'll say that again, look for the signals that your marketing is working, not just the sales. This is where you start really, to remove any pressure on you, because sales are a great indicator of success. However, if you're using sales as an indicator of something not working, then it's going to give you an inaccurate picture because sales are actually a lagging indicator by the time the money actually lands with you or doesn't as the case may be, then decision was made actually weeks earlier whether somebody was going to buy or whether they weren't going to buy. So instead of actually asking, did this make me money? You might have to start thinking about other factors that you might want to measure. So, for example, we might want to know, did the right people engage with that content? Did it start conversations? Did the interest in what I'm offering increase? Did momentum build from that piece of work? They are signals. And those signals can tell you if you're on the right track, whether something actually needs refining in some way, or indeed, if something is missing from your marketing process that will stop you from pulling the plug too early. As I say, the decision to buy will be seen weeks down the line, and the decision not to buy will be seen weeks down the line. So we need to look at some other indicators as well, because people may not buy straight away, but they're becoming a lot closer to you. And that's the start of nurturing a prospective client. And if sales are the only thing that you measure, you're always diagnosing too late. So that brings me on to my next point. Adjust before you abandon. I get it. I know sometimes if something feels like it's not working, you just want to end it and move on to the next thing. But this is where most businesses go wrong. When something doesn't work, people assume the whole thing is wrong and it needs throwing away. The offer's wrong, the platform's wrong, the audience is wrong. And perhaps marketing just doesn't work for me. But usually only one part needs adjusting. And if you're measuring impact, then you can normally work out exactly what that is and why. So you don't abandon a test because the results weren't clear. You, you refine it, you tighten the nuts and bolts, you run it again. But be sure not to change absolutely everything at once, because you'll then not know what has worked and what hasn't. So we adjust one thing at a time, and that might be, for example, the message, the image, the timing, or something else entirely. So remember, marketing doesn't always need replacing. It just needs a bit, of course, correcting. So next, give it a fair window. And this kind of goes hand in hand with this whole thing of, you know, making adjustments. If you give some decent time to your testing, to your marketing activity, that will bring you more calm. Ruling things out does feel quicker, but it's actually slower because every reset is putting you back to zero again. And the truth is marketing, marketing needs consistency. It needs that repetition and it needs time for patterns to actually emerge. For you. Now, that doesn't mean waiting forever. It means deciding in advance how long are you going to run something for? How long are you going to test something for what are those measures you have in place? What are those signals that you're going to look for to decide whether or not it's working and what are you going to tweak if those signals don't show up? Now, the clarity of this comes from staying long enough to learn. So don't throw it all away. Make sure that you are taking the time to get some clarity on what is and isn't right adjusting, but leaving it long enough to know that it's definitely working or not working. Now, my last point that I want to come onto, and I bang on about this quite a lot, but it is the most important point that I want to make. And this is really important when we're building a revenue generating marketing process and it's this, we are building a system. The moment marketing stops feeling like guesswork is when it becomes systemized. Now what does a system actually have? Well, it has moving parts, but all of those moving parts actually support each other like cogs in a wheel. Nothing's random, nothing is disposable because otherwise it doesn't actually connect and work together. Now, when marketing is a system, you don't rule things out. You optimize, you diagnose, you refine, you build momentum. So let's have a little look at an example of a system. Now in my business this might be a goal, for example, to get X number of new clients on to one of our marketing coaching programs. Now, one of the audiences we will definitely be going to when we are looking for new clients is our existing database. So that is one area of potential that we have in our business. So our system around that would be, for example, to prepare a sequence of emails inviting them to a core webinar which is probably going to be for free. Next up from that, they will attend the webinar after having several reminder emails from us. Now at the webinar they will learn heaps about a key subject and they'll walk away feeling much more knowledgeable with some great little golden nuggets and they'll get loads from it. But at the end, we will spend five to 10 minutes giving information about our coaching programs. Then after that, they are sent that offer of our coaching program in an email so they've got the chance to have another look at it, read more information and decide whether or not it's for them. And let me tell you, that won't be just one email. They'll get reminders as well. Some will sign up and they'll pay immediately. Others they will want to have a discussion. So they'll be invited to have a discussion with us about that coaching program and whether it's right for them. Now, after all of that process has been done and we've done that kind of in bulk from a marketing perspective, we then move on to more of the one to one approach where sales calls are made so they'll be made to the relevant people to move them forward. And there's going to be generally three outcomes from that. Outcome number one will be they join the program. Outcome number two will be they say no, but we're going to put them back in our pot for the next campaign. So all is not lost. We'll have another bite at the cherry later on down the line. And C will be perhaps it's not now, but they might say I'm interested, interested in the next one. So they'll join our wait list for the next program and they'll be the first ones before it goes out to our wider database to to get the very best offer when we next launch. So you see, all of this connects in the form of a system, a carefully constructed set of offers, messaging that aligns to the customer's needs and a process. And that process is gradually moving them through the system so that they end up making some kind of a decision whether that's a yes, a no or next time. Systems rely on process. It's not once and done marketing. If you don't have a process, you will never have successful marketing. We're now in the marketing karaoke segment and the song I would like to anchor this episode to is this Fix you by Coldplay. Now just listen to the lyrics. I'm only going to read them, I'm not going to sing them to you and you might resonate with them. When you try your best but you don't succeed when you get what you want but not what you need when you feel so tired but you can't sleep Stuck in reverse. Does that sound familiar? Now if you're anything but happy with your marketing results, they need diagnosing and they need fixing. Not waiting to see what happens. Not wasting your time, not wasting your energy, not wasting your sanity. You it has to be fixed. So let's wrap up today. If your marketing feels slow, frustrating and endlessly in progress, it's not because you need more ideas, it's because you need a better way of deciding. And those decisions are what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what to change. When it doesn't land immediately, how do you tweak it? How do you make it better so that you can actually get started on what works? If you need help implementing this and getting straight to what matters so you can stop ruling things out, and as I say, stop spending far too much time, energy and money, get in touch with my team on infoallstarmarketingclub.com and we can talk to you about our client creation program. It's cost effective, it's highly results focused, and it's there for for you. And I'll see you next time on what's that Got to Do With Marketing?