Dude. You’re doing it wrong. Brash, I know … but the truth hurts. Your business has some marketing failures. I’ve been on your websites and social media profiles. I’ve seen your print collateral. Or worst of all, I’ve not seen anything and I don’t even know you exist!

We could all gather around, point our fingers and laugh at your utter failure, but we’re not going to do that. We are about building up. Not tearing down. Don’t feel bad if you find your “marketing self” on the following list. Today is a day of redemption! It’s not too late to turn the beat around as Gloria Estefan so wonderfully sang. That song will not leave your head for the rest of the day. You are welcome.

1. No strategy – What’s the plan, man?

If your business has a website, brochures and a bolded phone book listing, that’s not a marketing plan. Also, if you heard Joe Bob’s Fantastic World of Carpets had some success with Google Adwords or you got Wreck-it Ralph’s Auto Repair direct mail piece and decided to give it a go, that’s not a plan.

If you have no goal, you will not hit it. The World Cup is happening right now. It would be pretty useless for the teams to kick around the old fútbol without any goals. Nobody wins! Your customer won’t know you can meet their need and you won’t have any customers.

How do you formulate a plan that works? Know yourself, your brand promise and your customer. Once you understand who you and where you are going, you can get there. This will allow you to stay focused on the marketing that will work for you.

2. No call to action – Give them something to do.

Websites, brochures and all other marketing tactics are great, but if your potential customers do not respond it is pretty much a big waste of time and money. That is why a clear call to action on all your marketing materials is essential.

Many businesses are focused on what they want to tell the customer about themselves. “Oooo, look at the pretty pictures and the fancy artwork!” Yeah, that’s great and all, but in reality you want the customer to take action by purchasing your product, contacting you, signing up for your email list,etc. Make an offer that they cannot refuse. For instance you could have something like this on your pet care website:

“5 Tips to Keep Your Cat From Murdering You in Your Sleep” – Fill in your email to download now.

Sorry, I don’t actually have that whitepaper for you to download. This call to action gives the customer some useful information (you never can be too safe) and it gives you their contact information for future marketing correspondence.  A CTA works best when it’s paired with something people actually need or want, and that goes back to your plan.

3. No engagement – It’s called “social” for a reason.

Reminder: so•cial [soh-shuh l] – pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.

Did you catch that? Devoted to friendly relations. If you want your social media to be successful stick with it and make friends. Who doesn’t like friends? He who wants friends should be friendly. Being friendly, in case you forgot, is having conversations with people, encouraging them, helping them out.

Social media is necessary part of your overall marketing efforts in today’s connected business environment. The key is to find the right social media platform for your business and be devoted to it. Social Media is not a fix it and forget it tool. You do need to fix it, though. Fix it and friend others.

4. No content – You’re the expert … let the world know.

If you had the wherewithal to start a business then you hopefully know something about what you are doing with your life. Knowledge is power, my friends. Sharing not only helps others, but it will make you feel good inside, too. Yay!

Maybe you do not have the literary skills of Shakespeare, but that’s not required. What is required is the ability to provide good answers to questions that your customers are asking. There are many outlets to produce content that connects with people: blog posts, infographics, video or a combination of all of those.

If you really struggle with creating content, find someone to help you out. You are still the source of knowledge. It’s always best to come from the originator, if at all possible.

5. No personality – If you’re happy and you know it, tell your face.

Generally speaking people want to be happy and if you can help make them that way it’s a good thing. Be yourself in your marketing efforts. Not all companies should follow in the footsteps of the goofy Old Spice or GoDaddy campaigns. Once again, know yourself and then be yourself.

Being in business should make you happy and if it does not find something else to do. We all have to choose how we face each day. We can address it with a smile on our face or with something else entirely that will not help anyone. Smiling literally will affect your mood for the positive and that should be carried out in your marketing tactics.

Make others happy with your message. You choose.

A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose. – Tom Wilson

You can do it! Tweak these marketing issues and you’ll see good things happen. Let me know what you think. What other marketing problems have you seen that need to be fixed?

I love the word strategery. If you missed it, this came into the consciousness of America through a Saturday Night Live skit featuring Will Ferrell as President George Bush. This was inspired by Bushisms which are basically humorous statements when Bush misspoke. What’s even better than strategery is strategy. It is a real word that has real value. Strategy can be defined as the art of devising or employing plans toward a goal. Strategery can be defined as one way Will Ferrell made bank at someone else’s expense.

I believe most everyone sees the value of setting goals. Having a goal is great. Attaining the goal is the best. We can set awe-inspiring goals all day and all night, but if there is not actionable steps to make the goals reality then we might as well get some sleep. A goal without a plan is just as useless as a car without gas. It’s not going anywhere.

To interject some reality here, I’ve not always been a big goal setter. Sure I had some ethereal dreams and general ideas of where I wanted to go. More than likely this comes from the fact that I wasn’t willing to get a plan together. Setting a goal — easy. Implementing a plan — hard. As I’ve matured (code for become an old guy) I’ve realized the necessity of goals and planning, and more so for the latter.

In marketing terms, strategy is the mid range goal of your company. This can be three to five years of implementing your plan to achieve success in the area you projected. How does this happen? The strategy must be broke up year by year, month by month, week by week. These are tactics which can be defined as a device for accomplishing an end. Tactics can be described as your short range goals. A goal is to increase sales. A strategy is to have a productive sales staff. A tactic is to equip them with ongoing training.

It’s important that our strategy and tactics are well thought out and planned. The book Marketing Plans explains that companies with bad tactics and bad strategy will die slowly. One with bad tactics and good strategy will survive. Great tactics and bad strategy will suffer a quick death, and those that do both well will thrive. One of my favorite quotes from this book:

Any organization doing the wrong things more efficiently is destined to die more quickly than their less efficient counterparts. It is a bit like making a stupid manager work harder, thus doubling the chaos and probably offending twice as many customers.

The goal is to thrive. This will include having a firm grasp on the day to day as well as the years to come. Maybe you have some incredible goals that you want to achieve, but don’t know how to get there. It won’t happen in one fell swoop. (Free knowledge: Did you know that “one fell swoop” was either originated or was popularized in Shakespeare’s Macbeth? I did not until I wrote it in this blog.) Get out the pen and paper if you still have them and begin to write your actionable plan.

Start with the big work down to the small. If you don’t know the big plan it will be very difficult to have tactics that produce the final result desired.

People may never see the strategy that you formulated for success, but the tactics will be evident everyday as your goals are achieved incrementally. Sun Tzu said, “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”