“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You’ve written a press release, you’ve run an ad in the newspaper, you’ve put a post on your company’s Facebook page, and you’ve sent out a flyer to your customers. All good efforts, but nothing happened!
One-off marketing is a waste of effort and money. Marketing takes patience and time.
That’s a pretty typical response to what I call one-off marketing. Yes, you did all of those things and you were doing great, until you stopped.
Successful marketing demands a commitment of time, money and patience. When I hear a business owner ask why their marketing isn’t working, my first question is whether or not they’ve made that commitment.
For many businesses, it is difficult to have the time to run the day-to-day of the business, while committing more time to put together a meaningful marketing strategy. And, allocating money for marketing is always a challenge.
But, in my experience, the most overlooked part of marketing is patience. Marketing takes time.
Successes don’t happen overnight
Rarely are there overnight successes, and even when you feel like you’ve seen your promotion far too many times, your customers probably haven’t seen it yet. Remember, you’re looking for your promotions; they aren’t.
Think about it in terms of your own behaviors.
- How often do you read all of the ads in a newspaper?
- Do you put off reading your mail for a day or two?
- Are you constantly on Facebook?
- As you’re driving down the road, do you pay attention to what’s on the radio all of the time?
Timing plays a very important role in marketing. Believe it or not, experts estimate that it takes 10 media impressions before someone recognizes that they have heard or seen a company’s message. And, you haven’t even gotten them to act on the message yet!
Demographics are key
That’s why it’s important to research the demographics of your targeted audience and to know when they’re paying attention. Don’t waste your money on newspaper ads when you’re trying to get the attention of Millennials. Demographics show that Millennials don’t read newspapers. They get news on their phones, and I can assure you they don’t even know what the Yellow Pages are!
If you invest time to know how to reach your audience, allocate the appropriate budget to do what you need to do, and resist the impulse to change things up after a couple of weeks, you’ll not only be doing the right things, but you’ll get the right results.