Marketing as you see it advertised online doesn’t work for everything and everyone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sell to people with the same reach and efficiency.

It just means you need to use different techniques to make the sale.Case in point. Why do you think so many companies still have entire teams cold calling?

The reason is simple: Marketing to the right people is hard and doesn’t have the same yield as cold outreach.

There are 3 common reasons companies stop marketing and a fourth, which is not as common but definitely deserves a mention.

For each we’ll:

Marketing should pay for itself. In some cases, you want your costs covered in the shortest time possible, in others, you’re ok to wait a while to find your ideal audience.

Either way, your marketing expenses must make sense.

Now, most companies have found at least one way to market their business in a way that makes financial sense. But a lot of them are basically stuck doing what they’ve always done. While that’s good, for many it is a vulnerability to only have one or two ways of generating interest.

Not only that, but it’s often hard to grow if you only have a few channels that you can exploit to get new business through the doors.

The problem is, no matter what some businesses try, the numbers never seem to add up.

And there may very well be little you can do about it.

If your score was below 8, I wouldn’t give up on marketing just yet. This means that there’s probably quite a few things left to try to get a footing using standard marketing strategies.

If your score was between 8 and 18, there’s a good chance you’ll continue struggling with marketing for a while. Changing tactics will certainly help you get results. That’s not to say that you can’t get standard marketing to work for you. But, it may prove to be more costly than what you’ve bargained for.

Anything above 18 is a clear sign that the cards are stacked against you. At this point, you’ll clearly benefit significantly from looking at it another way.

The premise is simple. If you want to sell, you’re going to need someone to sell to.To do that, you need the right audience. And you need to have a message to approach that audience with. The two go hand in hand.

The problem is that often, companies simply can’t find that audience. Sure, they know how to build a network they can sell the product to. But in marketing, your one-on-one relationships aren’t as valuable.

So even if you’re trying to reach the same people you normally sell to, you just may not be able to.

Or, you may be able to find them, but it’s just too expensive.

Example:

If your score was below 6, I wouldn’t give up on marketing just yet. This means that there’s probably quite a few things left to try to get a footing using standard marketing strategies.

If your score was between 6 and 14, there’s a good chance you’ll continue struggling with marketing for a while. Changing tactics will certainly help you get results. That’s not to say that you can’t get standard marketing to work for you. But, it may prove to be more costly than what you’ve bargained for.

Anything above 14 is a clear sign that the cards are stacked against you. At this point, you’ll clearly benefit significantly from looking at it another way. This is covered here (or continue reading for more problems).

Too much noise is awful. Depending on what it is, it can make an entire audience unresponsive or worse: mad.

But it’s not just that.Sometimes the market is so crowded, that it’s almost impossible to reach to people you need to. And it’s not just competitors. Even companies that have nothing to do with what you have to offer will add to the noise.

All you can do then, is to target someone else, or suck it op and spend the extra money to come out on top. But more often than not, it usually means the end for a company’s marketing adventures.

If your score was below 6, I wouldn’t give up on marketing just yet. This means that there’s probably quite a few things left to try to get a footing using standard marketing strategies.

If your score was between 6 and 10, there’s a good chance you’ll continue struggling with marketing for a while. Changing tactics will certainly help you get results. That’s not to say that you can’t get standard marketing to work for you. But, it may prove to be more costly than what you’ve bargained for.

Anything above 10 is a clear sign that the cards are stacked against you. At this point, you’ll clearly benefit significantly from looking at it another way. This is covered here (or continue reading for more problems).

If there’s one thing you may have noticed reading through this article it’s that there’s a lot of focus on finding the right audience or being able to reach it.In reality, that’s all that marketing is, finding the right audience and finding something that resonates with them.

Of course, when you have the wrong angle, you won’t even be able to convince your ideal audience to buy from you. But the reality is that in marketing you’re always dealing with 2 variables at the same time.

And that means that unless you already know what works in a certain context, and what that context is, all you’re doing is TESTING. That’s really it.

If you look at the most advertising-heavy businesses (and I’ve seen ad spending of some of the largest on the planet) 80% of their activity is testing 20% is semi-successful, and 1% does really well.

And those are businesses that have really optimized their marketing efforts.

So, what could you possibly do?

You take one variable and keep it in place. That’s it.

You see, most businesses know who they’re building their products for, or who they’re servicing. This is their ideal audience. Marketing then needs to find out what messaging works for them.

At that point, all marketing can do, is try to define the company’s real audience in the vague criteria that online targeting helps them do. So now, that ideal audience has turned into a vague and very limited description of it.

Sure, it’s narrowed down. But how much, really?

Don’t get me wrong, for a lot of businesses, this works great and better than before. But for some, it never will.

So, instead of this typical strategy, you take your ideal audience, and market directly to it.

No redefining needed. You already know who needs your offers, just market to the and exactly to them.

I’m not exaggerating here. If John Doe at company ACME, with this job function and responsibility is your ideal target audience, why wouldn’t you try to sell directly to him?

That’s right, instead of hoping to have him in your vague marketing audience, you take him, and put him in there. No more guessing.

Of course, the next step is then to reach out. But, before you do, it’s important to decide where you’re going to want to take action and how you’re going to approach this audience.

You see, this way of working can be used in close conjunction with sales, as well as with marketing.

If you’re a company that has people honed into cold calling, you can take advantage of that soon in the process by simply tracking what people do when you reach out.

If you’re not and your sales team is more focused on closing sales than filling their pipeline, it will take a bit linger to get people to convert to a point where they’re ready for the sale.

Either way, tracking will be essential.You see, there are two ways of approaching this:

You reach out and all you do is send them things of value that only a good lead would interact with, and regardless of if they leave their details or sign up for a call, you reach out to those with enough activity. You’re basically cold calling them, but only this time, you’re calling people you know need and want what you have to offer.
The second way is to wait until someone actually asks to be put in touch with sales. It’ll take longer, but if they’re really a match they will convert at some point.

Both work, but the first can get your sales within the first two weeks. The latter just stakes a bit longer.

And remember, you CAN do this. Because this time, you know exactly who’s in the audience, and you know where to find them. All you need to do is track the activity with enough detail to get the insights needed.

And that’s it.

In the next article, we’ll discuss HOW to compile the audience, what you need to watch out for and how to set up tracking. You’ll find it here when it goes live.

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