I don’t know about you but I have been getting in the Halloween spirit. At this time of year, I always pull out the horror movies in the hopes that I will scare myself silly.
Since it’s only a couple days until Halloween I thought I would focus on the scary things that I’ve seen over the years.
There are four things that I occasionally run into that I find kind of scary. They don’t scare me as The Exorcist does but I find them a little scary just the same.
Just to be clear, these are problems that need to be solved. It will help boost your marketing communication efforts and your business.
So, let’s solve some problems by exercising some demons.
You Don’t Have Clear Goals
I once sat in a meeting with a client whose goals weren’t clear to me so I asked them, “What are your goals?” The silence in the room was deafening. The leadership had no idea. All they knew is they wanted to make money.
Every business wants to make money. That’s the reason you started the business. At least, one of the reasons.
Stating that you want more customers or to make more money is kind of a given. The question is how much money? How many customers?
Say you want to increase revenue. You need to be specific. Maybe it’s 10%. Whatever it is there needs to be a goal and it needs to be SMART. That is they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound.
If the leadership isn’t clear on the goals, nobody else will be either. This makes it hard for everybody.
I’ve worked for organizations that were multi-billion dollar companies in which the goals were unclear. They had high turnover rates and the morale was consistently low.
Let’s look at this another way. If you were taking your family on vacation, you wouldn’t get in the car and just start driving nor would you show up at the airport and pick a city to fly to. You would determine a destination.
If you are willing to take the time to determine where you are going on vacation, why wouldn’t you take the time to decide where the business is going?
This will help everybody including your marketing team who can develop a plan (more on that in a minute) to help you meet those goals
The bottom line is that goals shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. Unless your an organization of one, your employees need to know what the goals are.
Define your goals and then communicate them clearly to everybody in the organization.
You Don’t Have A Plan
It would make sense that a company that doesn’t have clear goals probably wouldn’t have a plan but that isn’t always the case. I have been part of organizations that planned like crazy but had didn’t have clear goals.
Given that, you probably wouldn’t find it surprising that the atmosphere was rather chaotic.
After you create clear goals that are understood by your organization, there needs to be a plan to help get you there.
Planning can be scary but it’s essential. Without a plan, you are going to find yourself throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. While it may work occasionally, it will suck up your time and money.
Worse still, it will take much longer to reach your goals if you are able to reach them at all.
You Aren’t Practicing SEO
Just a couple of weeks ago an ad popped up in my Facebook feed. It stated that search engine optimization (SEO) is dead so don’t waste your time doing it.
I just shook my head. Of course, they were selling a quick fix solution and SEO isn’t a quick fix.
I know the knocks against SEO for the people who have dismissed it. It can take a long time to see results, it’s always changing, and it can be time-consuming. Yes, all these things are true but if you’re not investing in SEO, you’re throwing away potential opportunities.
People need to be able to find you. If you ignore SEO, it’s going to make it that much harder.
Most people don’t care about who you are. They care that you can solve a problem. If they don’t find you in the results of a Google or Bing search, they will go elsewhere without ever even giving you a shot.
If you have a website, you should be practicing SEO. Period.
You don’t have to be an expert. You just need to know the basics. Moz, SEMRush, and Orbit Media all have great information about SEO.
If you want to get started, The One Hour Guide to SEO by Rand Fishkin is an excellent place to begin. Better yet, it’s free.
Your Building Your Business on Social Media
I’ve touched on this several times, most recently in last week’s post.
Building your business on social media means that it is the center of your business. Without social media, the business would most likely cease to exist.
I feel like I have said this a hundred times but it’s worth saying 100 more. Social media is rented land. You don’t own it nor do you ultimately have control over it. If Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media networks decide to make a change it can cause serious damage to your business.
The social media networks will make what they feel are the right calls for their business, not yours. Because the platform is theirs, the people on it are also theirs.
You own two things, your website and your email list.
You have complete over the content on your website and you own the channel making it immune to anything Facebook does.
Move your followers and fans to your email list and you will always have a way to connect with them.
Final Thoughts
These are the four things that I find scary because they can impact your marketing communication and business results.
Do you agree? Did I miss anything? Tell me in the comments.
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