 Today I want to share with you a few things that you definitely should not be doing in your role as a marketing director. Welcome to the We Are Slam show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. Now this show is for the marketing professional whether you are a small business owner who's doing the sales and marketing pretty much all on your own or whether you are a marketing director or VP of marketing where you actually lead a team, develop a strategy and push forward to grow revenue through sales and marketing. And a lot of times I share what you should be doing to increase your level of marketing proficiency in your day to day. But today I want to share with you a few things that you definitely should not be doing in your role as a marketing director. Now these things have come from my experience working with marketing leaders from an agency perspective. Now generally we work with companies that have invested in a superstar marketing director VP of marketing but they don't necessarily have the funds to complete the team, right? And when it comes to digital marketing there's a lot of elements to the team. I mean you have copywriting, digital strategy, pay per click and advertising, you have social media, content, creative. These are all things that need to have video. These are all things that need to happen on a digital marketing team and as a marketing director you might not have the resources or the funds to go out and hire all of these roles in-house. And so that's where SLAM comes in and in my experience as a chief strategist I'm able to work hand in hand with marketing directors to not only develop the strategy but to see it executed day in and day out understanding what works and what doesn't work. And so whether that be B to C or B to B it really doesn't matter. What matters is that this tactic or this strategy consistently just doesn't produce the results that were expected. And so today I'm going to point out three marketing director pitfalls and how to avoid them. Okay so the number one pitfall to avoid as a marketing director is assuming that you know your customer. Now I know you've been hired for this position, for this role and I would think that you kind of know your customer but here's the thing that I've found in working with marketing directors over the years is that most marketing directors don't really, really know their customers. And here's the thing, when I talk about knowing your customers I mean there's this like surface level knowing of your customers which is the understanding their pain points and then knowing how to communicate your brand proposition, your value proposition in a way that takes them from pain point to solution to results. That's surface level understanding of your customer but then you have to take it a little bit deeper. If you want to you know stand out from the pack you want to be a marketing director VP of marketing on a level that's up here as opposed to just a run of the mill then you really have to understand your customers inside and out. And what I mean by that is let's take it a little bit deeper than understanding the pain points and how your product or service alleviates those pain points. Let's understand where your customers are. Now when I talk about the holy grail of marketing I'm talking about right person, right place, right message, right time. And two big pieces of that formula are right place and right time. In order to have the right timing of your message you have to understand where they are along the buyer's journey. This is a little bit of a deeper understanding of your customers. Where they are you have to understand not just how to connect with people that are like towards the end of that buyer's journey and already on your website but how do you connect with and reach out to and find people that haven't even they don't even know who you are. Your product, your service, your brand they don't even know that they need these things yet. How do you connect with them earlier on with a message that resonates and captivates and motivates them to become part of that funnel. So that's right time and then there's right place and when I say right place I mean where are they where are they online where are they offline how can you effectively advertise to them in a way that drives results and in order to do that you can't just throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. You have to understand where they are it's kind of like playing darts blindfolded. If I gave you an unlimited amount of darts and said you know I want you to hit the bullseye eventually even though you were blindfolded you would hit the bullseye and you do so because you'd have an unlimited supply of darts but here's the thing your advertising funds are not unlimited and you can't just blindly throw ads out there and see what works. You have to kind of know where your customers are and if you understand where they are then your ads are going to be more effective and so my advice is to get to know your customers get to know them way deeper than you thought that you needed to know them and this will allow you to do things more efficiently more effectively put money into the right places with messages that actually captivate motivate and inspire your customers to take the actions that you need them to take for your marketing advertising to be successful. Now the number two pitfall that I want you to avoid is the shiny object. This shiny object is something that is attractive it's attractive to all marketing directors to marketing professionals. It's that new toy that new app that new technique that you're just like okay I'm seeing this everywhere it's popping up everywhere it's in my Facebook feed I've got to try it out I want to see if it works so you know we're going to pull some resources I'm going to put a little bit of funds over here and I'm going to just see if this thing works and that is a pitfall that's a mistake you don't want to go there because what that means is that you're taking resources from something else that is more tried and true always give time for that shiny object to prove itself let somebody else figure out if it's going to work or if it doesn't let them make the mistakes and then once this shiny object becomes more tried and true that's when you should invest your time in it that's when you should invest your people in it that's when you should invest your money in it okay so don't be the first one out there chasing these shiny objects like a cat that chases a laser my advice is to be more consistent stop chasing that shiny object and double down and focus in on the things that you're already doing that you're seeing having a positive effect give your strategies your tactics give them time to work but then the flip side of that coin is you know don't fall victim to sunk cost fallacy which is this idea that you have to see things through if you see that something is not working and the numbers support that and you do know your customers and you know where they are and you know the messages that you need to communicate in order to connect with them and then this avenue this channel this this this medium is not working then by all means shut it down don't think that you know if you just put a little bit more into it that you're going to get a little bit more out of it if you do that then you run the risk of sinking too much into this endeavor into this medium into this channel and you're not going to see anything come out of it so trust your gut and if something's not working cut it off kill it and move on to the next thing well side note when it comes to marketing technology mar tech you know we see this a lot we see where you know there you just always want to try the the newest best thing whether that's the technology the new tool the new app and really I want you to see consistency in this area too if there's a tool that you've selected to do a certain thing don't even spend the time like don't even read the emails of all the new products or services that are out there I mean you chosen this stick with it if it's doing what it's supposed to be doing then don't worry or assume that there might be something better out there for what you're doing right now whatever this is that you've selected it's sufficient it's working it's doing what it's supposed to be doing and you need to be okay with that so when it comes to marketing technology consistency is key give things time to work and don't spread yourself too thin I mean you don't want to have a million different apps for a million different things I mean if you're just one person or if you have a small team you're not gonna do that even here at the agency we're not necessarily like testing new tools and apps you know on the daily matter of fact we we find things that work for us that work for our clients and then we reinvest we double down in those areas and you know I might not know what the with the newest hottest you know most talked about potential you know game-changing app might be and that's not something that we're necessary in the talk about on this show but I do know what's tried and true and what works for us and what works for our clients and I'll share those things with you I'll share those tools with you and I'll say that these are consistent these are predictable these are the things that you can depend on and then when new apps come out just you know let them run their course let them kind of you know get through that beta stage or get through that initial you know time period with with with the ramp up in customers and if they're still around six months 12 months 18 months from now then maybe consider them if it's something that you can grow into okay but don't waste your time you know always just trying to figure out like what's the next best app because that's just a waste of time and you can't get that time back all right the number three pitfall to avoid is copying your competition I've seen I've actually seen this more times than I'd like to admit with clients right and it's like okay like so-and-so is using this advertising channel we need to be there we need to put our money there but here's the thing you don't know if it's working just because they're there doesn't mean that they're actually generating results from that channel from that medium number one let's just assume for the sake of argument that their marketing director is really talented and this person knows exactly what they're doing they know their customer they're not chasing the shiny object and they are consistent if that's the case and they're still there six to twelve months down the road then that's probably a good place and you should be there but no matter how good they are if it's month one you're like oh they just popped up over here don't go and put money there because you're just spreading yourself too thin you're spreading your advertising too thin always be consistent and invest and double down in the areas that are working I guarantee even even if you have a massive budget you haven't exhausted the potential in that area yet you know a lot of times when it comes to pay per click for instance you're really only touching 10 20% of the available market at any given time and that's because your budget isn't large enough to allow you to really get in front of a hundred percent of the market a hundred percent of the time and so if pay per click is something that you're doing and it's working rather than investing you know thousand two thousand three thousand dollars in this experimental you know medium why don't you just go ahead and put that extra two three four five thousand dollars into pay per click knowing that you're still not going to reach the full capacity the full potential of your available market so these are my three pitfalls to avoid for marketing directors if you avoid these things then you're going to be better at what you do and of course that's the that's the goal right it's going to allow you to not only achieve more of the results that you want to achieve but it's going to allow you to you know have bigger opportunities better opportunities it's going to allow you to level up and you know break away from the pack and be known for being good at what you do which is marketing so the first is assuming assuming that you know your customer never assume go deeper dig deeper and understand what times you need to communicate certain messages in order to bring them into the funnel number two avoid the shiny object avoid spreading yourself too thin chasing too many things that might not have a benefit to you long term I know it's tempting but do your best to stay away from it let things prove themselves out six 12 months later after you've noticed it is a good time to go back see the conversations that are happening see if they have good support whatever the case may be make a decision at that point but don't be the first don't don't just chase this shiny red object and try to think that you know because you're going to be the first you're going to get a big benefit from that or you're going to see you know an additional ROI rather than chasing the shiny object seek consistency be more consistent and number three don't copy your competition specifically don't do everything that they're doing don't go to all the places where they're advertising and think that those things are working for them if they're there in six to 12 months then maybe they are and maybe you should introduce yourself in those areas but for the most part do your own thing be your own brand remember the key in marketing is differentiation and if you're just a copy of a copy of a copy if you're just copying everything that everyone else is doing then it's very hard very difficult to differentiate your brand and make that value proposition case for your product or service to your customer so be your own brand be your own product your own service stand out on your own you know rather than playing king of the hill go out and stand on your own hill and if you differentiate yourself in that way then I guarantee you're going to draw in more customers so with that thank you for tuning in if you've enjoyed this episode be sure to let me know in the comments if you're watching on Facebook or IGTV YouTube or if you're listening on a podcast network then be sure to subscribe rate and review let me know who you are thank you for tuning in I will see you next week thanks for watching if you like what you 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