Out With The Old, In With The New! But Should I Get A New One or Just Fix It?
Marketing materials are perishable. One cannot assume that just because they were created once, they will remain effective and appropriate for ever.
I once met with a new client who did not understand why he needed to redesign his website and exclaimed “We just did it 10 years ago!”
Not every website or brochure has to be discarded and replaced with a completely new one. Some marketing tools can simply be updated, recalibrated, or refreshed. Websites, for example, have a life expectancy of 2 or 3 years on average. At that point, you will need to decide if making another update is sufficient, or perhaps a completely new website with all the most recent ‘bells and whistles’ should be designed.
Every piece of marketing material and tactic should be looked at very carefully, periodically, and a decision must be made: Do I make adjustments, or should I create a completely new one to replace it? The frequency by which this question should be considered depends on the item itself, the industry, market conditions, and other considerations.
Here are a few common causes for a marketing strategy, tactic, and materials to become stale and outdated:
- Competitive market variables have shifted
- Economy is performing better (or worse)
- Your company’s composition and/or capabilities changes
- Technology has made your marketing tools or tactics outdated or even obsolete
- New technology or marketing platforms have become available
- Better and more efficient ways to market have emerged
- Physically damaged or worn-out items (think collateral, trade show displays, etc.)
The decision whether to only make adjustment or toss the old and ‘build’ new, depends on how much work is needed and how much resources would be required to pursue each approach.
If you are not sure that your marketing approach or the marketing tools you are using are still the most relevant for you, or how to go about implementing change, we will be happy discuss this with you with no obligation on your part. Just call us or go here for a complementary consultation.
Duke Merhavy, MBA, Ph.D.
President & Chief Marketing Officer
What Is Fractional CMO & Marketing?
Fractional CMO & Marketing is ‘Your Smart Marketing Formula’ when you need expert marketing leadership and marketing services to accelerate growth and improve profitability, but you’re not quite ready to hire a full-time Chief Marketing Officer or your own marketing department
Our unique arrangement is the most efficient, innovative, and cost-effective formula for you. Click on the image on the right to watch a short video.
Accurate Information in Marketing
By Anna Kunz, Manager of Marketing Services at Fractional CMO & Marketing
Whether your objective is to inform new customers about your business, find potential investors, or promote an upcoming event, product, or store launch; marketing efforts help promote your endeavors.
However, missing and wrong vital information in marketing materials is very common – we see it all the time! Don’t miss opportunities to be effective because you omitted important information in your promotion. From international brands to small companies, such marketing mishaps are all too common.
Even when you proofread and review your marketing materials as you create them, it would be beneficial to periodically review them for accuracy and completeness. From emails to newsletters, and from websites to catalogs, missing and inaccurate information might have escaped notice the first time around.
We recently audited a new client’s current website, and found that the toll-free phone number, that appears at the top of every page on their website, was not a working number… In fact, it hasn’t been working for quite a while!
A quick list of commonly unnoticed errors and omissions include seemingly obvious things such as:
- URLs
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Physical address (or old ones)
- Outdated personnel/management list
- Slogan
- Logo
- Pictures of people and places
- Products and services
- Prices
Make your marketing efforts pay off – Check, test, review, and update often!
Marketing Lingo: “Attribution”
The process of identification and assignment of ‘credit’ (importance or contribution) to the marketing touch points that a customer was exposed to prior to their purchase decision or other desired action.
In other words, finding out what marketing efforts attributed to the purchase decision.
‘Marketing Lingo’ is a regular column in which we define, or otherwise explain, terms often used in marketing but not necessarily correctly or properly by some
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