It starts with a dead body.
As all good detective stories do.
In this case the dead body is my client’s marketing program.
What was an energetic and athletic body of marketing success two years ago when Econo Industries launch their new manufacturing product is now a lifeless corpse incapable of producing anything of value.
It’s a real mystery.
My client, Philip, stares at the dead body. He wants to get it moving again.
But throwing more money at a dead body is not going to put breath back in its lungs.
Ignoring that body isn’t working either. It is starting to stink. People are beginning to notice.
Not just inside his organization but among his allies and competitors.
What’s happened to Econo Industries, they wonder?
That’s when Octain got the call.
We donned our tatter brown raincoat and dived into the crime scene to solve the mystery of the dead marketing body.
We wanted to know how it died. What killed it. Most importantly and how to get Philip and Econo out of their mess.
In our business this kind of investigation is called a marketing audit. This is how our marketing audit for Econo went.
- We examined Econo’s target marketing data: customer profiles and personas; who they were focusing on for their marketing efforts. We discovered they had moved away from their original customer target when their sales started to peak about a year ago. Instead of focusing on selling more to loyal customers (see Deep) they bought a bunch of unvetted marketing lists and sent high pitch invitations to buy and buy now. That’s a bullet to the gut of any effective marketing campaign.
- We examined their messaging which had fragmented over the last year to become a generic set of features focused on what the product did well but failed to connect the product value to the customers’ needs. Another shot to the neck of their marketing efforts.
- We traveled the customer journey – the path a prospective customer takes from the first awareness of their problem to finding the right solution. Along the customer journey we saw that customers who once visited Econo’s website to download product information were bouncing off within five seconds of hitting the Home Page. That’s because when Econo’s message got fragmented, feature driven and generic, their website content changed from a solid lead capturing machine to a confusing carousel of products options that spun customers in many different directions.
- We evaluated their competitors to see how their brand story differed from Econo’s. We found two competitors who were clearly articulating the outcome and results of their products compared to Econo’s trumpeting of their features. Worst of all, one competitor’s website boasted logos of several customers who had once been loyal to Econo.
- We dug into their sales presentation and process and uncovered the fact that the sales team facing decline sales was heavily discounting their products and services throwing their original effective value-pricing approach out the window.
It was abundantly clear what had happened.
With all good intensions and despite the team’s hard work, Econo’s attempt to capitalize on their early success had killed their marketing momentum instead.
The only place that marketing program was headed was to the morgue.
Once the Econo team saw the data-driven results of our marketing audit, they were ready for a change.
We reset their marketing program to day one with a clear ideal customer profile for advertising and email marketing; a compelling value and benefits-based message, and a revised website with a strong lead magnet attracting the right prospects.
The result was a sales increase of 33% in the first 90 days.
Case Closed!
Want to learn how a marketing audit can revive your underperforming marketing program?