Don’t let your good marketing habits give way to toxic ones

Marketing for the C-Suite, not the customer

Beware of marketing to the executive team rather than to the customer. 

One of the most toxic habits in marketing is when the CEO or CFO dictate the brand look and feel, messaging, website design and marketing collateral. This is typically purely based on personal choices and without regard to what the customer really wants. The end result is a marketing mix that is sterile, dry and disengaged from what resonates with the target market.

Mistaking ‘downloads’ for instant sales leads

Many of the ‘leads’ generated by marketing activity aren’t quite ready for conversion. Someone downloaded your white paper? Don’t have sales call them up straight away to see if they’re willing to buy. 

Research shows prospects engage with at least five pieces of marketing content until they’re willing to buy. Leads need to be nurtured slowly. In many large SaaS/Data companies, these leads can take six months to a year to come to fruition.

Internal marketing inefficiencies

Poorly managed marketing operations can kill even the most brilliant strategy. Think endless online chats, and meetings where marketing teams spend hours shuffling papers. Decisions by committees and an extremely complex approval processes can significantly delay marketing plans and lead to team frustration and burnout.

By investing in the right people, tools and processes, you can streamline marketing, cut costs and significantly reduce the lead time for sales.

Micromanagement and bullying

Marketers are under more scrutiny than ever before, are expected to do more with less, and are often the first to be in the firing line when things go wrong. So, marketers are feeling the pinch…or is it more like a hard, painful punch?

A recent report in collaboration with Australia’s Fair Work Commission found that bullying will often occur where there’s a ‘strict pecking order’. Meanwhile, another recent survey further revealed marketing and communications professionals fared the worst among job functions, with the highest burnout at 83.3 percent. It’s no wonder marketing tenure is at its lowest in decades!

Beware of marketing agency overload

How many external agencies does one marketing campaign really need to be successful and cost effective? Often, we see a company engage a video-content agency, a PR agency, a content marketing agency, copywriters, social media manager, designer and a digital marketing agency. Then they hire a junior marketing manager just to manage them all. It’s a drain on marketing budgets and a waste of time and valuable resources. 

AZK Media is based in Sydney, Australia and services clients both locally and around the world.