Stuck in a rut? Five ways to un-snooze your marketing

Do you feel like you’re going through the motions with your marketing?

Like nothing’s wrong, but nothing’s really right?

Well, maybe you’re stuck in the rut, for whatever reason, when it comes to your brand, marketing and communications. 

Right now it might not seem like an issue, but this feeling of inertia might be a leading indicator of performance issues to come when your customers start feeling it too.

Here’s five ways to un-snooze your marketing. 

Experience your business

Experience your brand first hand. Go through the shopping or buying experience. Masquerade as an enquirer over phone or email, dress up and go into a store, or have someone else do it for you and ask them to document their experience. Alternatively, listen in to enquiries to a call centre or questions on the shop floor. It doesn’t really matter what approach you take, but getting a different lens and perspective will give you empirical data you can then consider. 

Look for inspiration in the everyday

What impresses you and why? What do you love? What do you hate? Of course, this isn’t about taking your whims and fancies as a gospel, but getting into a mindset of understanding what resonates with you and why can help reframe your marketing challenges. 

This doesn’t mean poring over advertisements and post rationalising your reactions. In fact, it might be better to think about it more generally – what works that isn’t specifically ‘marketing’ or ‘brand’ – what qualities do you enjoy in particular things and why. Consider why other people might share these perceptions and why they might not. 

What do your customers say?

The data can sometimes be hard to wrangle but spending a day with reviews, forums, social media posts and notations from a CRM can offer a wealth of new knowledge and insight. 

If you feel like you can have conversations one on one, why not follow up directly with the customers about their feedback, treat it as a learning experience, try and understand the why behind their point of view. Often, what is being said at the surface level has a deeper experience or insight behind it. These deeper insights are the things you want to address vs the surface level commentary about an issue. 

Phone a friend

Chances are you know a lot of people. Some of these people also probably quite like you and might have faced similar challenges themselves. Why not try and solve it together? Have a pint, or a coffee, get lost in the moment. Be frank. Be open. Be honest.

Of course, one school of thought would tell you you’ll end up with an unstructured mess, and if you do nothing with the input or try and immediately act upon it probably won’t do you any favours. However, if you have a few of these conversations and ruminate on them over time something, at some point, will fall into place.

Given that time is often of the essence, it’s probably best to have these conversations openly and often, not just when you’re in a bind. 

Join it up

Businesses are fickle things with silos and kingdoms a’plenty. Of course, you can’t go blundering in and force people to start working together. 

However, what you can do is create ways and means to encourage the socialisation of ideas in your business. This can be as simple as open discussions, an ideas inbox, or a way to experience a challenge beyond a piece of paper or a screen. Hold space for these kinds of exchanges. Experiment with different approaches. Encourage the socialisation of information and insight across teams to new ways to approach the inertia you might be feeling. But, remember to act upon it and talk about the action that has been taken. Take your team on a journey so they can join up their input with action. 

Break the deadlock

We’ve touched on five low-fi ideas to reframe your challenge and offer a fresh perspective on your brand and marketing, most of them start off with insight. Lots of them involve thought and reflection. Time doing this kind of activity is time well spent. And can save you countless hours down the line in efficiencyt