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How Procrastination Can Sabotage Your Marketing Efforts

3/8/2023

 
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Procrastination is a common habit that affects many aspects of our lives, including our businesses. According to Dr. Itamar Shatz, founder of Solving Procrastination, people procrastinate because their drive to delay is irrationally stronger than their drive to act. Here are three common reasons people procrastinate.

  1. Behavioral: It feels better to put something off than to complete the task.
  2. Fear: You're afraid of making mistakes or doing the task wrong and being criticized. 
  3. Perfectionism: You can't complete the task because it isn't perfect yet. 

How Procrastination Can Harm Your Business
Procrastination can cause delays in....
  • Missed Opportunities: For instance, a delayed product launch could cause you to lose ground to your competitors and ultimately reduce your forecasted revenue. 
  • Response Time: Delayed responses to customer inquiries can result in a loss of sale and your reputation. Every lead that you receive is valuable, and delaying a response could mean losing that lead and the time and money you spent getting it in the first place.
  • Strategy and Planning: Procrastination can lead to spray-and-pray marketing efforts that lack a coherent narrative and customer journey. Inconsistent marketing efforts can lead to a lack of engagement and ultimately hurt your business.

How to Stop Procrastinating
Overcoming procrastination can pose a formidable challenge, but it's crucial for the success of your marketing endeavors. Below are some suggestions to avoid it in the future:
  1. Identify and Address Your Fears: Many people procrastinate because they are afraid of failure, success, or change. By identifying and addressing your fears, you can gain a better understanding of what's holding you back.
  2. Break Tasks into Manageable Steps: Large and complex tasks can be overwhelming, making it easy to delay action. By breaking tasks into smaller, manageable steps, you can make progress and feel more motivated to continue.
  3. Give Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes: Perfectionism can be a significant obstacle to completing a task. Accept that your work won't always be perfect and give yourself permission to make mistakes along the way. 
  4. Set Deadlines: Procrastination can thrive in an environment without deadlines. By setting deadlines for yourself, you create a sense of urgency that can help you stay focused and motivated.

Another Option - Hire a Consultant!

Hiring a marketing consultant can provide you with essential assistance in organizing your marketing efforts, prioritizing tasks, and establishing a strong foundation for successful marketing programs. With their expertise, they can also aid in setting up CRMs, crafting campaigns, developing customer journeys, generating leads, and streamlining follow-up processes, all of which can simplify the launch of your marketing initiatives.
Do you need help with your marketing efforts? Contact Interimarketing today!
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​In Honor of National Oreo Cookie Day, Use Our OREO Model to Target the Right Customers, with the Right Stories.

3/6/2023

 
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Your Story Doesn't Start With You - It Starts With Your Buyers!
Understanding who your buyers are and what they need, is critical to your story's success. The OREO Model will help you identify the organizations you need to target, the roles of the people in these organizations, their expectations of products like yours, and the outcomes they hope to achieve.

  • Organizations: Identify the types of organizations that can benefit from your products/services. You can break this out by industry or actual companies. 
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  • Roles: Define the titles of everyone in the buying cycle at these organizations, including the end users. Create a value proposition for each role.
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  • Expectations: For each role, you need to understand the presumed and expected product attributes that they will want to know to evaluate your product. If your story doesn't meet the presumed attributes, you're in trouble. They will use the expected features to compare you to competitors. So, you'll also need a way to exceed expectations with a delighter feature. What can you offer that goes above and beyond your competition?​
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  • Outcomes: Define the outcome they are looking for and how you help them achieve it. What would delight them? What value will they get from you? What problem do you solve that your competitors can't?

Meet the Top 4 Barriers You’ll Encounter Selling to Organizations

11/17/2022

 
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Selling enterprise solutions to any organization is challenging and time consuming to say the least.  And the more complex your product is, the longer it will take to close. Even if you’ve made a contact, garnered interest and locked-in a meeting or even a proposal phase, you still have 4 big barriers to overcome. 

Barrier #1: Integration
Your solution can’t deliver the benefits you promise until it is integrated with currently used systems and  workflows. If left to the customer, this may be beyond the ability of internal resources (time, money, staff) to do it successfully.

Barrier #2: Trialability
Because of the first barrier (integration), it is difficult, if not impossible, to effectively try your solution before it is bought. Scaled-down demos or trial versions often can’t show enough of a benefit to validate a purchase decision.

Barrier #3: Transcendence
Your solution cuts across multiple organizational (functional and political) boundaries and requires near simultaneous buy-in from multiple influencers and approvers, each with a different receptivity to innovation.

Barrier #4: User Behavior
Because of the innovative nature of your solution, users must change their behavior to attain the benefits the solution promises to deliver. Left on their own, users will rarely change.

Here are Some Solutions to Help You Overcome these Barriers
  • Develop an easy, three step process that demonstrates how easy it is to integrate your solution
  • Propose a pilot program where customers can experience success in the early stages
  • Develop stories to satisfy the differing interests of everyone involved in the buying decision
  • Nurture your end users and show them how your solution will highlight their continued success.

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How Will You Grab Buyer's Attention This Fall? Is Your Value Proposition Provocative Enough to Get You To the Top of the List?

9/7/2022

 
Only a few projects on any organization's list of initiatives stand a chance of getting funded any time soon. So, if what you sell cannot be positioned as an essential part of one of these initiatives, your chance for success is slim at best. Unfortunately, investments in new product categories rarely get funded out of existing budgets. Instead, the funding must come from anticipated savings or new sources of revenue unleashed by solving a critical problem. So, the big question is, "Can you offer a compelling reason to be on the list?" Here's a hint, it better be provocative. Provocations help customers see their competitive challenges in a new light that makes addressing them seem extremely urgent. So, if you want to get on the list or get to the top of the list faster, here are some helpful tips about building a good provocation:

​A Good Provocation:
  • Reveals an unrecognized problem
  • Suggests an unanticipated solution
  • Proposes an unseen opportunity
  • Or Defines an unexpected relationship between your organization’s capabilities and the expansion of their success​​​
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Contact us today to learn more! 
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Do You Know What Your Buyers Hope For?

4/18/2022

 
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Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon once said, "In the factory we make cosmetics, in the stores we sell hope."  Are you addressing what your customers hope for? Far too often that answer is, "no". Your message gets buried with product features, technology and specifications that cause your prospects’ eyes to glaze over. Until you understand the emotional drivers behind your customers' buying decisions, your sales pitch will merely deliver information, not inspiration. Here are three easy steps to find out more about what's on your customers’ minds.

1. Do your research. If you don't have a research budget - Use Google! Tap into the people who get paid to stay on top of industry trends (i.e. Trade journalists, management consultants, bloggers, etc.) Look at the editorial calendars of your trade publications and presentation topics at upcoming industry events to find out what topics are trending. Stay informed.

2. Talk to existing customers. If you don't have a budget for an advisory board or focus group, talk to your customers. Find out what they are excited and worried about going into the next year. Are there new regulations coming or pressures for greater efficiency? What would make their work lives better? What motivates their buying decisions?

3. Tell them what to hope for!  If you can't find a new trend you can sell into - create one. Test the story on trusted colleagues and measure their reaction.  Does it excite them? Does it create belief in your solution? Remember you are far more likely to attract a following and create brand loyalty if you address your buyers' hopes and needs.

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    Meghan O'Sullivan
    Cheryl Allen
    Gabe d'Annunzio

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