Feel Like Your Marketing Is More Miss Than Hit? Here’s Your Fix

Ever felt like the marketing you’re doing bears an uncanny resemblance to that phrase “throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks?”

I can relate.
For me, it looked like this:
Eleventy billion ideas (that’s a real number btw),
not enough time,
and the budget? Well, that’s a whole other story.

But despite slogging away, it can sometimes seem like nothing moves the needle.
Or if that needle is moving, it’s ever so slowly.

It’s taken me many years to work out how that you can’t afford to throw ‘marketing spaghetti’ at the wall, UNTIL, you’ve got consistent sales and revenue coming in.
It’s just not financially doable otherwise.

If you’ve ever felt like YOUR marketing doesn’t work, here’s how to fix that.
Even better, you can get through this episode quicker than it takes to boil a pot of noodles.


———-

 

Marketing Challenges and Business Metaphors 0:02

Identifying Successful Strategies 3:08

Reflecting on Past Campaigns 4:16

Analyzing and Reverse Engineering Obstacles 7:06

Planning and Executing Effective Campaigns 8:10

Focusing on Core Business Activities 9:33

Final Thoughts and Call to Action 10:10

Hey there,
Sal here!

Ready to step up and scale your business…I’ve got you!

LISTEN NOW on The Bringing Business To Retail Podcast

00:00:03 Salena Knight

Hey there and welcome to the bringing business to retail podcast. If you're looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or e-commerce business.

00:00:18 Salena Knight

Then you're in.

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The right place.

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I'm Celina Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award-winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to.

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The next level.

00:00:33 Salena Knight

I'll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store.

00:00:40

So you.

00:00:41

Need.

00:00:41 Salena Knight

To do is take action ready to get started.

00:00:53 Salena Knight

There and welcome back to the show. Now I.

00:00:56 Salena Knight

Don't know if I've told.

00:00:57 Salena Knight

This story before, but when my.

00:00:59 Salena Knight

Daughter Lana was a toddler.

00:01:00 Salena Knight

She loves to cook. We will cook all sorts of things, make cakes, muffins, all the things. But like most kids, she went through that phase. You know, the one where.

00:01:10 Salena Knight

We only wanted to eat the same thing every single night. That's a her. It was plain pasta with olive oil. A little sprinkle of parmesan cheese and a side salad. It had to be the complete deal. Absolutely simple. When it comes to preparing a kid.

00:01:29 Salena Knight

Occasionally we would spice things up with a slice of garlic bread, and she had that same dinner for at least five years, so there I was. Boiling pots of spaghetti spills, you name it. I cooked it and one day to make lemon laughs. I.

00:01:45 Salena Knight

Did the old.

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Straw pieces, spaghetti at the wall trick.

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You've heard of it, right? The idea that.

00:01:50 Salena Knight

If the pasta sticks, it's ready. If it's not, it needs more time. I'm not sure if that's the most hygienic way to test your pasta, but it sure beats burning your fingers trying to squish your hot noodle between them. That little trick became a metaphor for something else in my life, and maybe used to in business. It often feels like we are throwing a marketing spaghetti at the wall.

00:02:12 Salena Knight

I'm just hoping something sticks.

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Have you felt like?

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That, like you are throwing a dead after I did something expensive. Some of them time consuming.

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Just to see if one of them might work.

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I've been there.

00:02:25 Salena Knight

Too, you have eleventy billion ideas, none of time, and the budget? Well, that's a whole different story. And despite working hard, it can sometimes feel like nothing moves the needle, or if that needle is moving, it is moving.

00:02:41 Salena Knight

Ever so slowly now, I think this is really pertinent right now because the economic landscape has changed so much in the last five years, it has been a complete roller coaster. And what worked in the past may not work for you.

00:02:56 Salena Knight

Now, but the truth is, whilst the marketing tactics might change, the systems and marketing and business as a whole has a core of foundations.

00:03:06 Salena Knight

That are on.

00:03:06 Salena Knight

Rock solid. So if you feel like you've been throwing spaghetti at the wall and it's not sticking, how do we stop this cycle? How do we move from crossing our fingers and hoping something will work?

00:03:18 Salena Knight

To.

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Knowing that.

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Will step one start by looking at what is already working for your business, what strategies, what products, what campaigns have got new results in the past and focus?

00:03:31 Salena Knight

On that, we repeat it, posted it. Most of us have success staring us in the face, but we are too distracted by the next shiny thing to even notice.

00:03:41 Salena Knight

Step 2. You will come up with 27 reasons why you can't do.

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More of what?

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Works. I don't have enough staff. I don't have the inventory. We just ran that promotion last month.

00:03:51 Salena Knight

Sound familiar? And this leads us to step three. You will start searching for shiny new solutions. You will tell yourself that you need a new strategy or a new platform, or a new campaign. Or even worse, you might even find yourself saying I've tried that before and before you know it.

00:04:09 Salena Knight

You are back to throwing more expensive, more expensive spaghetti at the wall and hoping crossing your fingers and hoping that this time it will stick. Let me tell you something from experience, I did this for years. I felt like I was pushing.

00:04:25 Salena Knight

The boulder up.

00:04:26 Salena Knight

Hill, like that little Lego man. Have you seen that picture of the Lego man? He's trying to roll a basketball up a hill. I would ask myself over and over again. What am I doing wrong? When I look back on how I ran campaigns then versus now, I would come up with an idea. I'd send an e-mail to you.

00:04:46 Salena Knight

We put post on social media and I would call that a campaign. I would dust it off and say it is done.

00:04:52 Salena Knight

And we look back now.

00:04:53 Salena Knight

Now it's no wonder so many of them flocked, right? I hadn't thought about. You would get the promotion. Was it going to be my loyal customers, my VIP's or those bargain hunters? Truth be told, trying to segment a list. When I first started in retail was literally a half a day event back in the day.

00:05:14 Salena Knight

We didn't have systems like clavio. We had MailChimp and you would have to go in there and you would sort through the people and you would copy and paste them into different lists and you would be charged a fortune for them just to be able to see them. But these days, you've got.

00:05:30 Salena Knight

Skills segmentation and personalization are available with the click of a button. Here's the hard truth. It wasn't Facebook's ad platform that was the problem. It wasn't Google's algorithm. It wasn't even the economy. I was the problem. I was throwing very expensive marketing spaghetti at the wall with no real strategy.

00:05:51 Salena Knight

Behind it, nothing was sticking because I wasn't sticking. But you don't have to keep doing that if you want to eat.

00:06:00 Salena Knight

The bowl full of.

00:06:01 Salena Knight

Pasta, rather than pick up the subway.

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Noodles off the.

00:06:03 Salena Knight

Floor here's my suggestion.

00:06:06 Salena Knight

Stop throwing the spaghetti at the wall. You need to stick and you need to stick with what works. So let's just rewind and go back through that process again. Shall we go back to step one? What has worked well in the past? Focus there. Don't move on just because you're bored. I've made that mistake.

00:06:26 Salena Knight

Before I have pulled best selling products because I was bored of them. Hooded bath tales for kids. Anyone. Yeah. Even when my customers were still asking for them, it took my team literally begging me for months.

00:06:41 Salena Knight

To the point where they would write down how many people requested certain products before I relented. I mean, how?

00:06:48 Salena Knight

Stupid was that.

00:06:49 Salena Knight

I was literally throwing money out the door. It wasn't even a marketing campaign. We had people asking for these products and because I didn't want to.

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Sell them because I thought.

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We do. Baby towels were stupid.

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I wasn't serving my customers.

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So here is the real.

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Plan analyze what is worked in the past.

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Spend some time digging through the data. Trust me when I say you will be very.

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Surprised at the?

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Results campaigns that you think weren't successful when you really look into them, you might well see that sure you only sent 2 emails, but the conversion rate of noise was through the roof. You could have what I like to call.

00:07:27 Salena Knight

Money fountain right under your nose and not even know it.

00:07:32 Salena Knight

Step 2. I want you to list out those 27 reasons why you think you can't do more of it. Now 27 is my go to number.

00:07:40 Salena Knight

In reality, it might be one, it might be 5, it might be 10. I'm sure you can come up with a bunch of reasons why you think you can't do more of what works. Write them down, my friend. Every single excuse that you can think of. Step three, you are going to take those that list and reverse engineer the obstacles.

00:08:01 Salena Knight

Is it that you need more hands?

00:08:02

On deck.

00:08:03 Salena Knight

Is it that you need to put more traffic on your site? Great. Find the solutions. Maybe you need a new e-mail marketer. Maybe you need a better agency, or maybe you just need someone to pack those orders and get them. You already know this work, so why would you not double down? Remember, this is an untapped money.

00:08:22 Salena Knight

Fountain step four, with the timeline on everything, track your progress daily, weekly and monthly and always always debrief after each campaign.

00:08:35 Salena Knight

What worked, what didn't, and why? If you ran this campaign again, what could you change and what would the results be?

00:08:44 Salena Knight

So, step five, stop getting distracted. A product launch isn't just a quick e-mail, it is a full sequence. Now for us, we say around about 18 emails backed up by social media, paid ads, and maybe if you have a bricks and mortar store, some in store activation.

00:09:03 Salena Knight

All of that.

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Is a campaign.

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A couple of books, a couple of winners.

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Not a campaign.

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I guess the point I'm.

00:09:11 Salena Knight

Trying to make here is this.

00:09:13 Salena Knight

Stop trying every shiny new things if you don't already have consistent sales and revenue coming in, map out the entire customer journey plan the budget, map out the resources you need, and put KPIs in place and side note, if you are doing anything other than.

00:09:33 Salena Knight

Focusing your attention and resources on those things. Then you are not doing your job as.

00:09:38 Salena Knight

The CEO of your business.

00:09:40 Salena Knight

And stop jumping ahead by hiring.

00:09:42 Salena Knight

People before you even build.

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Out processes for them to succeed.

00:09:46 Salena Knight

Because if you don't, you are going to keep throwing mouth cooked. Very expensive spaghetti at the wall crossing your fingers and hoping it will stick.

00:09:57 Salena Knight

And guess what? It probably won't. If you don't want to become resentful of your business or the money that you've poured into it, then do the work actually do the work.

00:10:08

Work.

00:10:09 Salena Knight

Stick to what works and remember where focus goes. Money flows if you are struggling to build out your plan or to stay focused, let's talk. I would love to help you get unstuck and back on track until next time. Eat the pasta and drink the wine and enjoy the freedom that owning your business gives you. Thank you so much for joining me.

00:10:29 Salena Knight

And I will see you.

00:10:30 Salena Knight

On the next episode, so.

00:10:34 Salena Knight

That's a wrap. I'd love to hear what?

00:10:37 Salena Knight

Insight you've gotten from this episode.

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And how you're going to put it into action.

00:10:42 Salena Knight

If you're a social kind of person, follow me at the Celina night and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes.

00:11:01 Salena Knight

And leave me a.

00:11:02 Salena Knight

Review on your platform of choice, because the more.

00:11:05 Salena Knight

Reviews the show gets.

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The more independent retail and e-commerce.

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Stores just like yours.

00:11:11 Salena Knight

That we can help to scale and when that happens, it's a win for you. A win for your community and a win for your customers.

00:11:21 Salena Knight

I'll see you in the.

00:11:22 Salena Knight

Next episode.

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