Episode 105 | Marketing Misfires
When marketing results fall short, the marketing itself usually becomes the first suspect. The creative needs to change. The budget needs to increase. The audience is wrong. The platform is not working. Maybe it is time to start over.
But what if the campaign is doing its job?
Marketing can generate attention, drive traffic, create leads, and get someone through the front door. What happens after that point depends on the rest of the business. That distinction is at the heart of Episode 105 of The Glint Standard.
Look Beyond the Advertisement
One of the easiest marketing mistakes to make is focusing on appearance without thinking enough about what the customer needs to do next.
A website can be visually impressive and still create friction. If someone arrives from a paid advertisement but has to search for a form, phone number, or next step, the business has made conversion unnecessarily difficult. Marketing succeeded in generating the visit, but the experience failed to capitalize on it.
The same principle extends far beyond the website.
Imagine advertising a promotion that successfully motivates someone to visit your business, only for that customer to discover the employees know nothing about it. Now the customer has to explain your own promotion to your staff.
That is not simply a sales problem or an operations problem. To the customer, it is all one experience.
Do You Really Need More Leads?
Businesses naturally want new opportunities. More traffic. More calls. More form submissions. More leads.
But sometimes more leads are not the answer.
The episode explores an example involving 13,000 leads in a market of roughly 50,000 people. At some point, continually searching for new prospects becomes less important than asking what happened to all the people who already expressed interest.
Existing databases can contain tremendous untapped value. Leads who were not ready six months ago may be ready today. Previous customers may need another product or service. Someone who downloaded an offer may simply need another reason to engage.
Capturing someone’s information is not the finish line. Without meaningful follow up, the initial marketing investment never has the opportunity to reach its full potential.
Give Good Marketing Time to Work
Another common misfire happens when businesses react too quickly.
A campaign launches. A couple of weeks pass. Results do not immediately meet expectations, so everything changes.
New creative. New audience. New platform. New strategy.
Then the cycle starts again.
Effective marketing requires intentionality and enough consistency to learn what is actually happening. Constantly starting and stopping campaigns can interrupt momentum before the business has gathered enough information to make a meaningful decision.
There is a difference between recognizing that something needs to change and never giving anything enough time to prove itself.
And Then There Is the $108,000 Mistake
Not every marketing misfire is subtle.
Episode 105 also explores the remarkable story of a nine year old who used his father’s company credit card to spend $108,000 on YouTube advertising for his Minecraft channel.
The mistake itself provides an obvious lesson about advertising controls and spending guardrails. But what happened afterward provides another lesson. The situation was turned into a story that generated significant attention of its own.
You cannot plan every outcome in marketing. You can plan how prepared you are to respond when something unexpected happens.
Marketing Is Part of the Business
The biggest lesson from Marketing Misfires is not about a particular platform, advertising tactic, or campaign.
It is about alignment.
Marketing makes a promise. The website, sales team, employees, customer experience, and follow up process all have to help deliver it.
That is why improving marketing performance sometimes requires looking outside the marketing department. Before increasing the budget or launching another campaign, follow the customer’s journey from beginning to end and identify where the experience starts to break.
As the episode puts it:
“Great marketing won’t make a great company, but a great company can make great marketing.”
That may be the most useful place to start the next time your marketing appears not to be working.
Watch or Listen
Ready to hear the full conversation? Watch or listen to Episode 105 of The Glint Standard, Your Marketing Isn’t the Problem. Your Business Might Be.
