What We Can Learn from the Marketing Monsters

Marketing monsters materialize when marketers lose their focus, forget their audience, don’t communicate well internally, get locked in by budget constraints or simply become lazy. While we haven’t examined every monster out there, we’ve touched on four common marketing monsters that can arise in your organization:

The Zombie Campaign
Morphing Werewolf Strategy
The No-Substance Ghostly Plan
The Pieced-Together Creation

It’s wise to not take these monsters lightly, as they can be difficult to identify and tough to get rid of once they’re around. Here are some tips to deal with marketing monsters.

Get back to basics
Whatever the reason, sometimes your marketing simply deviates from the original strategy. This is the perfect time to press pause and get grounded again. Review your plan/strategy and make sure it’s still relevant. (And if you don’t have a strategy, developing one should be your first priority!) Is your audience clearly identified? Are your key messages articulated? Do you have defined goals? This can be a helpful exercise to get you refocused and moving in the right direction.

Keep yourself on course
Putting simple checkpoints in place can help squash the monsters. Set reminders, schedule tasks and deadlines, communicate thoroughly with people who are involved, and get approvals from decision-makers before moving forward. These simple steps ensure you’re following the process and not straying off course.

Identify what went wrong
The need for self-correction might be difficult to accept, but it can save you from a monster that has already surfaced. Stop pretending everything is OK, find out what’s not working and take steps to get back on course. Did someone mess up? Was something approved prematurely? Was everyone scrambling at the last second because the scope was unclear or there weren’t clear deadlines? Screaming at the intern until they cry is not productive. We recommend taking steps to learn as a team and provide solutions to enhance the outcome of future marketing efforts.

Did we miss anything? Contact us if you have other suggestions on how to stop the marketing monsters!