One of my father’s favorite expressions was “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. When I hear vendors talk about quick marketing results or clients wanting instant success, they may very well have the best of intentions, but that attitude and orientation may actually undermine their ability to achieve any true marketing success. It’s not to say that there aren’t some opportunities that, if exploited properly, can’t bring some quick results, but this is the exception, and not the rule. It is important that businesses focus on a strategic marketing plan that, over time, will build a foundation of consistently improving marketing results. The desire for a quick fix often serves as a significant distraction and possibly results in a business siphoning off valuable strategic marketing resources to get that quick fix they seek.
We have seen recently in the digital world, the world of SEO, that sometimes taking shortcuts can lead to long term damage in a business’s search position. Years of back-linking and other techniques that weren’t necessarily “black hat” techniques, have led advertisers to be hurt by the constantly evolving Google algorithms. Quality content which is properly optimized continues to be most important for obtaining good search results…a process that can take lots of time to be done right.
Another significant problem of relying on quick hit tactics to get specific marketing results is that it can move a company away from its core principles and have many unintended negative consequences on the company’s marketing culture. We believe that you should always be looking for powerful ways to improve your marketing results. Sometimes we discover that there is low hanging fruit i.e. reaching out via direct mail or email blast to customers who haven’t done business with you in over a year with a special offer. That’s something we can take quick advantage of and we should use the resulting increase in revenue to reinvest in the strategic marketing plan.
The last issue which is also of equal importance is that quick hitting tactics can sometimes interrupt the process of unifying the marketing activities. It is imperative to maximize the synergy and thus, create better results from all activities. Doing a variety of “proven results”, getting direct mail or call center programs which often don’t fit the everyday marketing campaign, can distract from aligning your strategic marketing messages. Focus is a limited resource for every business and the loss of it can be particularly destructive to effective marketing and stable revenue growth.
