Marketing anxiety is the feeling of worry and fear that can overtake you during the planning phase of a new strategy or campaign and early in implementation where you wonder if all this time and budget will amount to more leads and more revenue for your company. We want your marketing efforts to work so we thought we should refresh our webinar from a couple of years ago, 7 Reasons Why Companies Fail at Marketing. The 7 reasons are still valid and we recommend you spend some time with the recording or the presentation slides in addition to reading this update.

Here are 5 more steps you can take to avoid suffering from marketing anxiety:

1. Have a plan and stick to the plan.
   Avoid implementing ad hoc ideas that you don’t fully investigate and understand the outcomes of. We called that Shiny Object Syndrome in our webinar and it’s hard to know what new idea might work and what might not in relation to your goals. Investigate, talk to some experts and be sure it’s worth adding this new tactic that will detract from your plan or possibly even replace an item in your plan.

2. Apply metrics and goals to your endeavours so that you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and what to expect.
   Then you can course correct if you’re behind in your projections or continue if you’re ahead of your goals.  The challenge is knowing what kind of metrics to implement, particularly when you haven’t used a tactic in the past. There are readily available industry averages that you can use to set your initial goals. If you fall below, check your assumptions, message, understanding of the customer and where they purchase and what their needs are. Be realistic about when you can expect to see an increase in your revenue from marketing.  For example, if your sales cycle is 3-4 months long, it is unlikely that you will see results from marketing before that time especially when you layer in the time to plan and execute a tactic. Additionally, acknowledge that a lack of brand awareness means you need to prove your credibility first, so think how to build that credibility and remember to add that time into your ROI calculations.
   
   
3. Understand your customer.
   Do you know what keeps them up at night? What they read or who they turn to for information? If not, you have no idea if your customers will see your efforts or respond to them. Work hard to be at the same place and appeal to their mindset. 
   
   
4. Have faith in best practices.
   Best practices become best practices because experience has proven they are effective. Each tactic is made up of several best practices strung together and then creatively is layered on top. Experienced marketers instinctively know how to execute campaigns because they are based on best practice. A good marketer understands that best practices evolve and change over time so is willing to make light experiments but if you’re experiencing underwhelming results, it could be a break from best practice.
   
   
5. Find ways to repeat yourself.
   If your messaging is proven to work be sure you place it throughout your website, sales collateral, campaigns, ads, etc. Second, look at your thought leadership library and select past assets that reinforce your messaging to refresh and use that to execute a new campaign. It’s less work than starting from scratch and uses good work that you know worked in the past. This tactic requires that you have a good library of assets to choose from.

Now that you’re going into your marketing with more knowledge you should be able to avoid marketing anxiety.  But if you’re still feeling worried, connect with the experts at The Mezzanine Group.