Marketing communications vanity or sanity?

By David Mitchell, managing director of The Marketing People and vicepresident of Cannock Chase Chamber of commerce

It is mid-April as I write about marketing and communications (Marcoms) and ponder how in one page, I can help answer the myriad of questions that both B2C and B2B businesses have today.

Many articles, blogs, webinars and statistics are available on, and offline that relate to specific Marcom disciplines that make up overall marketing communications; for instance, the above mentioned are content marketing and earned media/PR and apply to both B2B and B2C as part of an overall strategy. These, in turn, assist and support other areas of Marcoms, such as inbound marketing, social media marketing and SEO. I can see that this particular piece will become another one of those lists. Stating what you must do to survive and thrive in today's economy, which probably wouldn’t be of much help by adding more things to do that you will “around to” at some point or dismiss as all this high-level marketing stuff only applies to big business, and for many regional business owners who don't have an in-house marketing agency, department or qualified marketing staff marketing becomes time-sapping and may consider price matching instead as a quick win.

OK, you can search for what Marcoms is, what strategies are there for B2B and B2C and get your lists.

Now you have your list, how do you go about using the required channels to market and achieve your particular business objectives.

Marketing. And you're off. You can do this stuff. You have been doing it anyway before and during the pandemic. You have a website and blog, chat facility, social pages set, LinkedIn business and personal page. You are using Facebook and Google paid ads, following what Google and Facebook say, boosting ads, automating your search ads etc. Feels good to be doing something and getting stuff out there, using Chat facility, phone and Zoom, Teams and messenger meetings as part of your conversational marketing. So do more to obtain those conversations, and it should work, right!

The strategies for marcoms you now have for reference are reliant on content. You also know there is a lot of noise, unrelated content that is pushed to you, you find on every channel and touchpoint in the digital space. How do you know if what you are spending time, money and effort on is working? Or is it just more noise. What metrics are you using to identify what is and isn’t working? How you cut through the noise and start building relationships, sales, maintaining customers, and getting those customers to refer you.

‘What do they need to see and hear to make them choose your brand?’

Vanity metrics - The feel-good metrics, impressions, likes, time on site etc., fulfil your vanity, but does it correlate to return on investment. Do they show if they achieved the required goal, converted to a customer? They can help inform but only show part of the story. Good for Brand awareness, but do you have a brand or just a logo, and a brand strategy, tone of voice and messaging to stand out from your competition, be aligned with your target customers, capitalise on attention and bring viewers through the sales funnel.

Look to improve your marketing investments, your time, your teams time and costs, your providers time and costs, your advertising budget. Before you continue to add to the noise, take a step back from the marketing stage. Look at premarketing.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What do they need to see and hear to make them choose your brand? What experience will they have overall from the first contact to becoming a customer and then an advocate? What channels are they using to engage with your products or services, are you there with them providing the right content to attract, engage, convince and convert them? There is little point in planning automation, omnichannel, or other marketing strategies if you don't have the premarketing sorted. Time spent at this stage is proven to return on investment, setting out your goals, checking against the plan, using insights gathered to tweak as you progress and refine your marcoms to suit.

Turnover is vanity – or in this case, views, likes is vanity, cash is sanity, period.