5 Big Reasons Your Marketing Isn’t Working & 13 Questions You Can Answer To Fix It

Have you ever wished you could be generating more leads, making more sales, and bringing even more people into your business?

I know I have.

It’s easy to get frustrated from time to time, as to why your marketing isn’t working better than it currently is.  

In today’s post, I want share with you 5 BIG reasons why your marketing might not be working as well as it could along with 13 questions you can ask & answer in order to fix it.

If your advertising dollars aren’t producing the lead flow or ROI that you were hoping for, there’s a good chance that reason lies in The Big 5.

I want to share with you a diagram that you can use as a reference for analyzing your marketing efforts. Within this framework, I also want to give you 11 questions you can ask yourself to hone in on problem areas, fix them and begin making more money.

 

This diagram, and most of the content was inspired by Dan Kennedy’s magnetic marketing.  The book that actually sparked the attraction marketing movement in the home business profession.  

In the diagram, you see what I like to call “The Money Making Triangle” which consists of 3 key points that should be considered in ALL marketing and lead generation activities.  Message, Market and Media. This are the first 3 of The Big Five.  

Around the triangle, you’ll see a big circle whit the letter T.  This letter T stands for the last 2 of the Big five.  I’ll give you the first one, TIMING, and the 2nd one later on in this post. 

Let’s take a look at each of these points, and ask some questions to see if we can hone in on some opportunity areas to improve upon. 

Market

1. Is your market clearly defined?  

Do you know the demographics, Psychographics, and Psychic-graphis of the people you’re trying to reach with your message?  

According to Dan Kennedy, demographics includes things like geographical location, age, family size, income level.  

Psychographics goes a step further and gets into the likes, dislikes, religious affiliation & inner mind workings of the prospect.   

Psychic-graphics (a phrase coined by Dan Kennedy) , is all about tapping into the CORE problems, and DEEP desires of your prospect.   What keeps them up at night type stuff.   

If you can’t answer some of these questions, there’s a good change there’s some room for improvement in the selection of your market.  

All this market stuff should be clearly identified BEFORE you begin marketing your business.

Imagine someone giving you a bow & arrow, & telling you to hit the bullseye on the target, but when you to look for the target, it’s no where to be seen.  This is equivalent to placing ads and doing marketing BEFORE you know who it is you’re speaking to and trying to reach.  

I’ve done it myself before, and wasted a lot of money doing it.  Not recommended.  

2. Does the Market You’ve Selected Match The Message Your Putting out

I’ve noticed that in telling my own personal story, there are 2 things that I always share, that might resonate with certain people more.  I always tell the story of me putting my kids to bed, kneeling down and offering a prayer to God.  

Since that is a core part of my message, it might make sense to narrow down my market – to parents only or people of faith, since those are the people who have affinity with that message.  

That’s one way you can look at your message and narrow down the targeting to only people who match up with the message you’re putting out there.  

Narrowing your focus to people who are MOST likely to resonate with your message, might be a good way to eliminate wasted ad dollars, so you can put more of that money towards the people who are most likely to respond to your marketing.  

3.  Could your market be narrowed down further and more laser targeted than it is currently?  

4. Do you have affinity, authority or speak the tribal language of the people you’re marketing to? 

If you’re a dentist, then other dentists are likely to resonate with you because you’re of the same profession and probably speak the same lingo.   If you’re a mom – then other mom’s are likely to resonate with you more than non mom’s will because you’re “In the same club” so to speak.  

If you have affinity, authority and speak the tribal language of a particular group – it’s going to be much easier to market to them.  

5. Do you know their perceived problems and do you have the solutions? 

Marketing is not just about selecting and honing in a group of people to market to, it’s about selecting a group of people who have problems and are aware of them.  

I see people sometimes picking groups of people to market to just because of a shared interest or something.  The problem here is you’re hitting the affinity part of the equation but missing the whole PROBLEM / SOLUTION part of the equation. 

People buy solutions to problems and so for making money – it’s REALLY important that the group we’re marketing to not only has problems, but also that they are AWARE they have the problem.  

This makes our solutions stand out to them when they see it because they are already aware.  

Message

6.   Is your messaging irresistible enough?  

Is your messaging, all the way from your ads, capture pages, landing pages, follow up sequence – attractive and believable.  Sometimes we’re so anxious for people to be sucked into our marketing that we’ll say things that, although true, are unbelievable to our marketplace. 

Another aspect of the message that relates to believability and can be helpful is something I learned from an amazing marketer, Vick S.  and that is to build positive expectancy into your marketing.  

Positive expectancy is when people see your marketing and say “oh that’s simple, I could do that”. Confused minds to not buy and that’s DEFINITELY something to remember in your marketing and lead generation activities.  

7. Is your message unique?  

Are you marketing an MLM company, a weight loss product or anything else that there’s TONS of others out there?  If so, it’s really important to differentiate yourself from all the noise.  

One easy way to do that is to position yourself as a trusted authority and advisor in the market, rather than just another sales rep.  This is one of the reasons blogging is so important.  

When you constantly providing value to your market place, people will begin to see you as a trusted friend & advisor and be way more likely to pay attention to your marketing messages.  

8.  Is it tailored for the right audience? **Different people buy the same thing for different reasons.

Let’s say your in a business opportunity.  One obvious, although overused message is “Let’s make money and get rich together”. 

If we remember that different people buy the same thing for different reasons, we’ll remember that moms might be joining, to be able to take their kids out of daycare and have quality time with them. 

baby boomers might be joining because they lost they’re retirement in the stock market and they just want a way to make enough money to be able to breathe with peace again.  

So once again – is the “Thing” we’re marketing wrapped in the right paper?  

9.  Are you talking about the right things?  Outcome versus features & benefits… 

One comment very common mistake is to spend time talking about the thing or the widget instead of what the thing or the widget actually does for our prospects. 

People do not care about what the thing is – they care about what it does for them. 

 

MEDIA

Media is simply the form of advertising you use to reach your target audience.  TV, Newpaper ads, Facebook PPC, Youtube, etc.  the list goes on and on.  

10.  Are you using the right form of media to reach your target audience where they want to be reached?  

Lots of things to consider here and we’ll save this convo for another day. The bottom line is – where are your prospects congregating and what’s the best way to get them your message.  

11.  Are you using so many forms of media at once that you’re shooting yourself in the foot in terms of being able to actually master and get good at one?  

This could be KILLING your marketing efforts.  I’ve been SOOOO guilty of this in the past.   When I first got started, I used Youtube and got really good at it.  That’s where I built my first six figure income.  Later on – I decided to switch.  

Then, I got stuck in switch mode for FAR too long. 

If you’re doing your own marketing, I recommend picking ONE media and focusing on it until you become a master. 

Timing

12.  Are you catching your prospects at the right time?

There are times when people are more susceptible to solutions than others. 

Youtube is a great example.  one of the things I LOVED about it, is that when people were getting ready to join a network marketing company, they would go to youtube and do a search.  

Guess what they found when they searched for my old nutritional company?  ME along with a few really good reasons why they should join me.

The timing was AWESOME.  

Some forms of media are easier to get this than others and if you can get it right it can be a big advantage.  

The other thing you can do to capitalize on timing is to be consistent with your follow up via blogging.  

If you’re always there, providing value, there’s a good chance that eventually the timing will be right for your prospect, even if it’s not now, and when it IS right, you’ll be there.  

Time for the Last of the Big Five and this is what the 2nd T stands for.  

Testing

13.  Are you tracking and testing your marketing messages?  

If not, you could be missing the boat, big time. 

As you may know, I’m currently learning paid ads on Facebook and one thing I realized is that you can set up different ads and Facebook will automatically optimize for the ones that are performing the best. 

In one of my ads, I set up the same story post with 5 different pictures. 

What’s interesting is that the pictures that seem to be performing well for the men, are different than the ones that seem to be performing well for the ladies.

I still need more data to be able to say for sure, but once I have enough data – I’ll know something that I can use to be more profitable in my marketing down the road that I wouldn’t have known had I not tested it.   

So there you go my friend. 

5 Big reasons why you’re marketing might not be working as well as it could be and 13 questions you can ask & answer to make it better.  

Did you enjoy this post?  Let me know down below.  I lovereading your comments.