“How many marketing programs did you not execute and why? I’ve seen many marketing plans with awesome campaigns planned that end up never getting launched because business gets in the way.”
This question, from Jeff Staats, the head of marketing at TalentLaunch, a company that provides services to the staffing and recruitment industry, is our second podcast topic.
Listen to the podcast below or read on for a more in depth analysis.
Part 1: Why do internal campaigns get scrapped?
As a small team/ company managing our growth is vital. We pride ourselves on the quality of our work and try to provide the most value to our clients as possible. Often times this means that we are entrenched in our clients companies, from research to their industry, competition, products and campaigns. In order to provide this level of attention to our clients we can really only onboard a few at a time and our capacity is limited for ongoing accounts. Because of this we are very careful of who we work with and qualifying criteria during the sales process to determine best fit clients.
Check out this landing page and imagery from an unused Hey Now! Media campaign: https://info.heynowmedia.com/art-and-business-case-study
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As we experience the ebb and flow of their industry and start to get comfortable with the new workload, we can carve a little time for our own growth objectives. We begin working on campaigns to achieve these goals, creating a strategy, getting the team on board, brainstorming creative and starting to execute on it. However, before we can get to far into our own deployment, the organic growth from new client exposure, word-of-mouth and awareness brings in just enough work that we go back to focusing on onboarding new clients and building out their programs and campaigns!
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The Cycle Continues…
As owners of a small company we wear many hats and as we take on sales, we are the ones facilitating the conversation. Once the sale is made, we switch hats and work on the strategy for the project. This is a common balancing act that entrepreneurs face as they move from start-up to scale up. We have entered “Scale-up” mode, and it’s hard to balance the ebb and flow of the sales process and then onboarding that new sale to the team in the form of a new project. You need sales to hire, so you can focus on growth and scaling, but you can’t hire until you get sales, and you still need to deliver the highest quality product.
Who else has struggled with this balancing act?
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Part 2: Why do client campaigns get scraped?
We take the focus from internal campaign and growth to client work. There are a myriad of reasons a client campaign could hit the cutting room floor. Some examples include:
- Goals/ Initiatives Change
- New Product or Service is Launched that takes priority over what was currently being developed
- Campaign Strategy Isn’t Easily Executed
- Campaign Ideas Are Too Expensive
- No Clear Process/ Especially for Approvals
- Creating Content is Overwhelming to the Client
Things to think about:
- Try not to pump the breaks on campaigns and sales even while managing growth.
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