Hit and Miss Marketing

For today’s Marketing Monday, I talk about a method of marketing many of us end up doing instead of a focused marketing strategy, and that is hodge podge marketing. I recently wrote about my experience testing out the possibilities of a Facebook boosted ad post. Like most of you, I am always looking for cost effective ways to increase quality traffic to my site. But after trying out this last method, I sat back to access my overall marketing strategy for this website. My findings weren’t pretty. I discovered that I had deviated off course with what I originally had planned due to what I call hodge podge marketing.

What is hodge podge marketing?

There are two aspects of hodge podge marketing. First, it isn’t really a focused method of marketing, it ends up being more like doing whatever sounds good at the time. And this can really derail any attempts for using any solid marketing method because you are doing it without a real plan. And second, trying too many things at once, and not really focusing to improve on any one of them at a time (aka ~ shotgun marketing). I find that it keeps you overly busy as well, because you feel that you are making progress by taking action, but you are really just walking around blindly in the dark.

What causes hodge podge marketing?

• Just starting out and wanting to get in on the fast-track
• Not seeing the sales results we had expected
• Impatience
• Easily get excited about new things and then become distracted by them
• Not bringing in the traffic to our site we had expected or hoped for
• Not having a solid marketing plan or just simply not paying attention to it
• Really not sure what direction to go, so just go in any direction that is presents itself
• Not giving one method enough time to work
• Running out of money, so switching back to FREE methods
• Suffering from the next ‘shiny object’ syndrome
• Easily becoming bored
• Any combination of the above and more.

What is the solution to stop hodge podge marketing?

First, either develop a solid marketing plan that includes your promotion methods and (here we go) a budget. Or if you have already developed one, go back and follow it or modify it to work for you (sometimes we become overly optimistic and extended ourselves or budgets beyond our means). Second – and this is important, to pick just a few methods we are interested in at a time and stick with them until they work, or until we are absolutely sure that method won’t work for us. What that means is to do just 2 or 3 methods and work on them until we nearly have perfected it, or until you are certain that the method isn’t for you. I suggest picking 1 or 2 free methods along with 1 or 2 paid methods for advertising. Then just replace the unsuccessful method with a new method one at a time. Once you get the hang and success with a few methods, you can then expand from there for two reasons:

1.  you are not overwhelming yourself or budget
2.  you already have in place a successful method or two that is working for you and bringing in traffic which in turn allows you more freedom to trying another method.

Final thoughts….

As you can see and possibly relate, hodge podge marketing is not a desirable method to do, but unfortunately, is practiced by a large number of us. Once we take the initiative to stop this nonsense and get back on track, we can then plan our strategy by picking just a few methods to start – then sticking with it until it works or proves out to be a dead-end. We can then move forward with the next strategy and build upon a solid marketing foundation. How about you, do you suffer from the hodge podge marketing method? Why or why not? Would you like to share your story, have an insight, or question? Then leave a comment below! Also be sure to share this article by selecting your social network friends ~ thanks! :)