18 reasons why marketing is there - sales are not

My role in the company is that I develop solutions for our clients to promote their business on the Internet.

In my opinion, the most important stage in the development of solutions is the stage of diagnosing the client's business: when I collect data on the current business situation, how this situation affects the company; find out what results the company wants to achieve and why.

After all, how can you develop a proposal without understanding what result is expected of you and what you will have to work with, do you agree?

I conditionally divide diagnostics into 2 types: external and internal.

I refer to external diagnostics everything that I can learn without the participation of the company or with minimal participation from it. This may include:

Internal diagnostics is about the situation within the company. I refer to it a joint analysis of such issues as:

As practice has shown, everyone has the same goal, only it is formed by different words. Everyone wants their business to earn more! And this is logical, because one of the goals of starting your own business is to earn money.

But the problems that prevent a business from earning more are always different. It is about them that will be discussed further in the article.

Checklist of reasons why sales are not growing

During the year of work as a specialist in business solutions, more than 300 companies passed through my hands. Accordingly, I conducted more than 300 diagnostics and analyzed hundreds of reasons that hinder (or lack) a particular company in order to increase profits.

I decided to share the accumulated baggage of knowledge with you, and combined all the reasons into one checklist.

The first version of the checklist included more than 60 reasons, but I think that such things as “The company does not implement recommendations / recommendations are not fully implemented / recommendations are not implemented correctly” or “Low qualified specialists” can be omitted. It seems like banal things that have already been said a thousand times.

I left only those reasons that the company may not pay attention to, or pay last; as well as specific reasons that a non-specialist in promotion may not be aware of.

I divided all the reasons into 2 categories.

Category 1, these are the reasons why you should not expect serious results from SEO promotion.

Category 2 - reasons due to which, in principle, neither SEO nor other types of promotion will give a result.

What's stopping SEO from working?

1. The site is not technically optimized.

Consequence: the site is not indexed / slowly indexed by search engines. Even very useful and high-quality content will not be seen by your potential customers, which means they will not learn about your wonderful company and will not leave applications!

2. Search results are occupied by aggregators.

Consequence: for those queries for which aggregators are shown in search engines, your company will not achieve high positions. Unless, you create your own aggregator that can compete in terms of assortment with those in the TOPs.

3. The site is promoted only by high-frequency requests.

Consequence: in highly competitive, overheated niches for top positions, you can wait for years. And don't wait...

4. Website of one service/product.

Consequence: such sites can be promoted (if the issuance is not occupied by aggregators), but this can be a very complicated and lengthy process. Before launching a promotion on such a site, it is worth evaluating whether the game is worth the candle?

5. The optimizer is 100% involved in project promotion, and the business owner is 0% involved.

It seems like the reason belongs to the list of "banal". But damn it! It is so common that it is worth continuing to mention it.

Consequence: the work on the project is being carried out and it is growing. But it grows where the optimizer sees it, and not the company.

6. The owner considers himself a specialist in promotion and insists on the implementation of his decisions .

The situation is the same as with the previous paragraph. Banal, but...

Consequence: the work on the project is being carried out. Where this will lead and to what results is a rather rhetorical question.

7. The demand for the product is not formed (it is not being looked for).

Consequence: even with the provision of TOP positions for all possible queries, there will be very few transitions to the site. How to search for something you don't know about?

8. Promotion is only for information requests (for commercial sites).

Consequence: the site can receive a huge amount of traffic. However, there may be very few requests and the requests themselves will often be of an informational nature. A situation where there seem to be calls, but there is no one to sell.

Common reasons:

9. It is impossible to contact you!

On your website, blog, social media networks, etc. – there are no contacts, feedback forms, application forms. Or all this is there - but no one picks up the phone and does not call back. Mail is answered on Tuesday and Thursday from 14:00 to 15:30.

Corollary: First, your (no longer) customers have most likely either ordered from your competitors or are doing so right now.

Secondly, they will not return to you and certainly will not advise you to anyone.

10. The other extreme - your site is full of feedback forms, lead magnets, pop-ups.

Consequence: irritation and dizziness.

You will receive referrals from the site. But who are these people who are ready to leave an application on such a site? Is it your audience that will buy your products at a price that is acceptable to you, or are they those who leave requests on all sites in a row and wait for cheaper offers?

11. The site is not easy to use, overloaded with information, slow, illogical.

Consequence: visitors get lost on the website, forget what they are looking for and where they are. As a result, they remain the most persistent. Of course, if you want to work only with such - the goal is achieved!

12. Website, blog, social. networks are overloaded with promotions, discounts, bonus offers and gifts. E-mail newsletters only about "profitable" offers.

Consequence: firstly, the bulk of the appeals are from freeloaders.

Secondly, you teach the visitors to wait and look for discounts.

When I ask such companies how well they sell goods and services without discounts or coupons, I get the feeling that I am scrolling a knife in a gaping wound.

13. Your product (or its description) is no different from a competitor's product.

Consequence: Your potential customers will make a choice based on other criteria - price, service, reviews, availability.

14. The product is the same as that of competitors (or described in the same way) and competitors are better known among the target audience.

Consequence: eminent brands will divert the main audience to themselves. Of course, advertising and promotion will bring you traffic and some applications. But think, if you are faced with the choice to purchase the same product from a well-known company, or from a brand unknown to you, then which cup will prevail, all other things being equal?

15. The business owner does not give feedback / gives distorted feedback (deceives, contrives).

There is a type of leaders who exaggerate as if "for motivation." And now imagine: a strategy is launched that should give a good result, but according to the client’s feedback, the effect is much worse than predicted.

Consequence: Experts puzzle over what the mistake is, adjust the strategy. Or fundamentally change it. And in the end, the result really gets worse.

16. Businesses want "fast-quality-cheap" marketing.

Consequence: there are a lot of options here, and positive cases are extremely rare, but they do occur! Therefore, let me rely on your imagination and life experience in thinking out a continuation to this cause.

17. "Sellers" act as informants, not sellers and consultants.

This reason could also be attributed to the "banal" and not described here. However, this is still a fairly common problem today.

Consequence: the efforts and resources invested in Internet marketing seem to slip through your fingers and imperceptibly improve sales.

18. There is no trust in the company / a high level of negativity in the network about the company.

Every year more and more people are looking for reviews about the company / product they want to buy. In some areas, more than 80% of the audience look at reviews before buying.

Consequence: You can increase your reach and traffic as much as you want, but if it's easy to find a negative about your company or its products, it will repel a large percentage of potential customers.

Conclusion

As I wrote earlier, this is not a complete list of reasons why there may not be sales, even if Internet marketing is established. If this article was useful for you and you want to get a complete checklist (with all, even the most banal reasons) - write in the comments or in a personal message, I will share it. Well, if there are a lot of such requests, then I will post a separate article.