The world is now obsessed with social media like never before. This is partly because the owners of these media keep adding new features regularly to attract users. About 7 years ago, Facebook hadn’t started reminding users of friends’ birthday and anniversary. Facebook hadn’t initiated the idea of having users celebrate their Facebook friends and you could only like a post or comment on it. There were no emojis. Then fewer people were on Facebook. But now, things are different.
As Facebook and other existing social media keep upgrading their services to attract more users, new social media are springing up with unique features. This is why more and more people are getting obsessed with social media.
Due to this obsession, several businesses now use social media as a marketing platform. App developers India now integrate popular social media into all their mobile apps. App developers now come up with several features that make social media marketing very easy. A common technique being adopted by mobile app development companies is the share button through which users can share posts on social media quite easily.
App developers India also make icons of their mobile apps very conspicuous so that as users navigate through their mobile devices on a daily basis, they get to see the icon. Another marketing feature that app developers India include in mobile apps is the ability to send a message to all the users of an app by sending just one message.
However, despite all the marketing features included on mobile apps and other marketing efforts some companies still fail in their marketing strategies. Their marketing efforts failed to achieve the desired results. Here are some of the reasons for that.
Vague or undefined goals
Some companies fail to define their marketing goals in the simplest terms. Hence, all the members of the marketing team are not on the same page. Sometimes issuing out sales target to sales or marketing team may not be enough to put everybody on the same page. When selling products, instead of giving out sales target in monetary terms it is better in the number of each of the products.
You should also let your team know the short term and long term targets. From the beginning of the year, you should let them know what the company hopes to achieve by the end of the year and you can now break down the annual goal into a monthly goal. A lot of companies just give out monthly sales target in monetary terms every month.
Some companies don’t reward group performance
If you overvalue individual performance ahead of group performance, there will be a problem. Any company that promotes only individual performance is promoting selfishness. Everyone will want to be the best and all of them will keep their “great” ideas to themselves.
There is nothing wrong with rewarding a high flying individual but not at the expense of his group. For instance, the best salesman should be selected from the best sales team. The best salesman should never be chosen among other sales team. This will make them put group interest ahead of individual interest and it will be in the overall interest of the group.
Poor delegation of responsibilities
Can you remember the following saying? Everybody thought someone will do it because it is everybody’s job but at the end, nobody did it. This is applicable here too. This is exactly what you will get if you don’t delegate every bit of responsibility to someone specifically. If over 50 percent of your staff can earn their pay without doing anything, they won’t do anything. So you must make it clear who is responsible for what.
A lot of sales teams have failed because their sales manager did not breakdown the responsibilities into bits and attach each bit to someone. You should always break down marketing tasks and assign each of them to each of your members at least for accountability.
Another type of poor delegation of responsibilities is to assign tasks to people who lack the skills and experience to get the job done. A lot of managers often blame the incompetent staff for not speaking up when the task was assigned to them. However, the buck of the fault is on the manger for an expensive assumption. You don’t just assign responsibilities, you should be sure that the assignees can handle the responsibility.
No marketing specialist
A lot of people believe they can handle the marketing of their products themselves so there is no need to hire any specialist. This is not so true. If you are able to sell your products without a marketing specialist, it means your products are in hot demand. Besides, no matter how much sales you make, you can definitely do so much better with a competent marketing specialist.
Unfortunately, not hiring any marketing specialist has taken a drastic toll on the sales figures of some other companies. There is no advantage in operating without a marketing specialist.
No penalty for poor performance
If there is no penalty for poor sales performance, people will find it very difficult to get out of their comfort zone. It will be difficult for them to make the extra effort. They will always be content with their sales no matter how poor it is.
It is only penalty that will keep your sales team for being at their best. At a point, General Electric was adjudged to be the best managed company. It was Jack Welsh’s principle that was doing the magic. Every year, the least performing 10 percent of the team are shown the way out. This is why every staff works hard to be far above the least performing 10 percent.
If you are conversant with the English Premiership, the principle works there too. The last three football clubs will be relegated to a lower division. This is why the fight against relegation is always tougher than the fight for trophy. Once there is a penalty for poor performance, your sales team will intensify their efforts.
Using old and obsolete strategies
Long before now, you could over-stuff your article with keywords and Google will rank you high. That has changed now. There is an accepted keyword density for every article otherwise your article will look like spam. Anybody that tries to adopt such strategy now is just wasting his time.
Conclusively, although there are other reasons marketing efforts fail, the ones outlined above are the commonest ones so you should avoid them like a plague.