One of the things about marketing, is that everyone thinks they can do it. Yet so many are NOT doing it or wasting thousands of dollars and not getting results.
Companies treat marketing like a game of pin the tail on the donkey. That’s not how marketing works. That’s how money is wasted, brands are tarnished and customers are lost.
There are many business owners that do the same things over and over, wasting money, time and energy.
Here is one scenario. Does this sound familiar?
- You know you need to stand out amongst your competitors by doing some sort of marketing activity.
- You then look for a digital marketing provider thinking that will answer all your problems.
- 3 months later you realise it doesn’t and you feel that provider has been ineffective and you look for another or even worse stop doing anything
This is what you call SILO marketing – the process of putting most, if not all of your marketing eggs in one basket.
You cannot rely on a SILO provider for a full assessment of your marketing needs, because their expertise is in that specific area and they’re trying to win your business.
Digital marketing agencies may not consider proven marketing tactics like advertising, direct mail, networking, or trade shows because they simply don’t offer them.
If you ask an
- ad agency,
- telemarketer or
- web developer
what’s the best way to grow your leads, they will say advertising, cold calling and a new web site respectively.
This is also what is known as tactical marketing , which is very different from strategic marketing.
Here is a more specific view of tactical (SILO) marketing:
When an organization decides they need to hire someone to “do social media” for them, there’s rarely any thought, much less a strategy in place, to develop content for use in social media channels that’s specifically tied to business goals. There’s rarely any focus on a competitive analysis or the importance of listening and monitoring and using data to drive an overall social media strategy.
This is similar with efforts at content marketing. Everybody on the planet wants to create content for blogs, yet it never occurs to anyone that writing is the easy part. Getting anyone to read that content is what takes skill. When the content doesn’t magically attract readers and drive traffic, everyone thinks the content marketing has failed.
Both examples are using tactics and tactics alone are just not enough. You must have a strategy (or multiple strategies) in place connecting all of your marketing initiatives and powering one another if you want them to deliver results.
Marketing today is so multi-disciplinary. An overall strategy is vital and will bring together all those tactical (SILO) providers. It will enable them to deliver better outcomes, on brand and directed to your overall business goals.