Most companies I come across are wasting their marketing budget.

A lot of those companies are struggling right now, and I do not think it is a coincidence.

Want to know where the biggest profit leaks are coming from?

Let me ask you a question.

What is marketing for?

How you answer this question is fundemental to the problem we are talking about. If you do not know what your marketing approach is trying to achieve, and what it is not trying to achieve, then you can not plan or manage it effectively.

Most people would answer that marketing has something to do with …

• Selling
• Generating interest
• Building a need
• Taking product to market
• Persuasion

… and so on.

Those are all worthy goals.

But what about learning, insights, research and planning? Should not those be part of your marketing approach also?

How about bringing back customers for more?

Now I know some would say that these things are important but someone else’s job.

We all know that it is less expensive to sell twice to one happy customer than it is to sell twice to two customers.

The fact is the same techniques and tools you use to drive awareness and desire can be used to generate feedback and customer loyalty, and if you work it right your campaigns can cover multiple aims at once.

Your biggest win though is by getting things right in the first place.

You should be finding out what prospects actually want and need to buy before trying to persuade them to purchase what you want to sell, you waste fewer resources on a no-chance proposition, or make a good product sell even better.

If your marketing is only out there trying to convince brand new prospects who do not want to buy then you are wasting your marketing budget, but at least now you know how to fix it!