Creating and Communicating Value

Applying principles you’ve learned up to this point in the course, list and explain four (4) ways that even a well-executed marketing program might fail.

Ways That Even a Well-Executed Marketing Program Might Fail

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Ways That Even a Well-Executed Marketing Program Might Fail

A well-executed marketing program defines the intelligent alignment of marketing operations to achieve business goals (Fotiadis, Mombeuil, and Valek, 2018). Considerably, a well-executed marketing program can take a business to the next level of success by reaching its audience and boosting the profits of the company. Sometimes even a well-executed marketing plan fails. Some of the ways in which well-executed marketing programs fail are lack of effective creation, communication, delivery, and exchange of value. These may include improper goal setting to create value, lack of consumer understanding to communicate value, lack of adequate consumer relationships to deliver value, and lack of exchange value in the marketing program.

Improper Goal setting to create value

Unrealistic goals and expectations are among the huge reasons why marketing programs fail to create value. A well-executed marketing program may fail in case the consumers don’t recognize the value it creates for them. Ideally, the stakeholders, executives, and the marketing team may expect that the campaign performs in a very impractical way. Outsized and unrealistic goals set marketers up for failure. Thus, lack of strategic, measurable, time-bound, and aspiration drives to failure of the marketing efforts (Hanssens and Pauwels, 2016). Many marketers simply fail to understand what they are working towards. This leads to a lack of unachievable goals and a culture where the failures of the marketing plan are expected and accepted and that the team just goes through motions rather than creating value to the customers. Often, improper goal setting pulls down the entire marketing program.

Lack of adequate consumer relationships to communicate value

Ideally, a marketing plan that fails to consider how to deliver value to the consumers is no longer essential in telling the audience that they need to be part of the product consumers. Without communicating value, a marketing plan may fail to benefit the company since there is a need to show the consumer the reason for choosing the company over its competitors. Most marketers fail to invest their time in getting inside the minds of the audience and improve customer relationships.

Lack of Consumer Understanding to deliver value

Failure to identify the consumer journey and the sales funnel lead to creating offerings that have no value to the consumers. Without information about a consumer, a marketing program has no way to move forward in delivering value to the customers. Therefore, the marketing program is just but throwing information to the consumer and hoping that they will take action. Considerably, most marketing programs target specific audiences in certain stages of the sales funnel (Armstrong et al., 2018). A better understanding of the audience in the target market enables the marketing plan to focus on reaching the audience. It is important to deeply understand the intentions, needs, and challenges that motivate consumers to drive marketing success.

Lack of exchange value

When the potential consumers are not satisfied with the exchange, the goals of the marketing plan cannot be achieved. Most marketers ignore exchange offerings, which are essential to improve customer value. Without superior value for the consumers, the marketing plan is likely to fail. Considerably, marketers utilize the process of adaptation, learning, iteration, and optimization to evaluate the weak points of the marketing programs and adjust the program into real-time to create better experiences for consumers. Going blind to implementing the marketing campaign without having tested the exchange value is likely to constitute a fail. Lack of dedication to optimization and testing might lead to running poor performing marketing programs since there is no time to realize the customer values.

In summation, a well-executed marketing program may fail in a number of ways, which include lack of consumers’ relationship, lack of consumer understanding, improper goal setting, and ignorance to exchange value to improve on the marketing program. However, when this happens, the marketing team should dissect what failed and prevent failure from happening again.

References

Armstrong, G. M., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2018). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson UK.

Fotiadis, A., Mombeuil, C., & Valek, N. S. (2018). Designing and Implementing a Marketing Plan’. The Emerald Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Tourism, Travel, and Hospitality. Emerald Publishing Limited, 297-311.

Hanssens, D. M., & Pauwels, K. H. (2016). Demonstrating the value of marketing. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 173-190.