The CEO's Guide to More Meaningful Marketing in 2025 (Part Two)

Well, we're back for Part 2 of 3 in this series on how to do more meaningful marketing in 2025 and let’s get right to taking a look at some more things people CHASE in Marketing that AREN'T leading them towards their goals. If you missed Part One, you might want to start there 😉

If you're ready for more, let's hit it!

5. Reliance on Gimmicks

You know, those "get people in the door" strategies that never tend to be fully delivered?

Yeah, those.

I know we're all been suckered in a time or two, which is why people still try for this.

But to what end?

Rarely does it convert to long-term clients and meaningful engagement.

So, why do people do it so often? Well, firstly because it's being SOLD to you as the "solution" a lot of the time, and secondly because we're used to it.

We're used to it being the way people get quick attention.

And if we're focused on "achieving" quick attention, it's been the Go-To for years.

The THING businesses do.

I've even talked to business coaches that coach their clients to CREATE click-bait items (anyone ever heard the term "tripwire")? Those low cost items that are supposed to get people into the funnel? Yeah, that's click-bait. And generally, it ends up leading people NOWHERE.

INTENTIONAL ACTION: BUILD SOMETHING

If you had the intention of BUILDING something with your clients, or CREATING something, would your goal REALLY to be to "just get them in the door"?

Of course not.

But if the focus is on the top of the funnel and just getting people in, there will be a lot of people who just SIT in your funnel, and eventually move themselves out because they really should never have been there in the first place.

So if instead you were looking at what you wanted to BUILD with your clients, those gimmicks might end up not looking like such a good idea after all.

6. Ignoring Consistency

Ok, so first of all, let's identify the difference between consistency and FREQUENCY...because they are NOT the same thing.

Frequency is how often you do a thing.

For good measure, let's thrown in Recency too...how recently you last did a thing.

Consistency is the quality of behaving or performing in a similar way.

See the difference?

Companies get SO concerned about frequency and recency that they commonly trade away consistency; presenting mixed messages or shifting tones that confuse the audience about the brand's identity.

People want to know WHO you are as a company. And when they can't GET that from your messaging, the ability to build trust completely disappears.

REALLY not what we're going for with our marketing efforts.

INTENTIONAL ACTION: LEAD WITH YOUR BRAND VALUES

The REAL ones, not just what you have documented on your website/posted on the wall 💡

I'm going to use myself as an example here, and tie into one of the "divisive" experiences I had this week (that I mentioned above).

A connection of mine had posted a post about how you should NOT use your middle initial in your LinkedIn name because: 1) you're not as famous as Michael B. Jordan and 2) the algorithm doesn't like it.

Now, if you know anything about me you'll already know my response to that, which I politely commented about in the comments of the post. Only to have him come back at me and tell me that if anyone wants this platform to work for them, they should take their middle initial out.

That prompted me to do my OWN post about how, if someone is telling you to stop doing something that makes you feel like yourself for the sake of the algorithm, tell them to stuff it.

That was NOT on my content calendar (I don't work with one, btw).

But my brand values called me to say something.

So, I did.

And equally, if you brand values aren't triggered, you can just leave conversations alone.

But when you practice saying what YOU would say, or doing what YOU would do (my definition of authenticity), then you're brand values shine through. And consistency based on THAT is what drives trust.

7. Over-Automation

Now, there are definitely things that automation can help you with. But when we get to the point where automation is removing all the value from our interactions with people, we went too far.

Let's look at website chatbots as an example.

It's as easy as pie to put a chatbot on your website nowadays. And you can even use AI to empower your chatbot to answer anything about your company that's documented on your website (or in other content).

We take the person out of the process, because people are expensive.

But how often have you gotten frustrated at a chatbot because they weren't able to answer your question, and kind of wished you at least had the OPTION of talking to a person?

I know I have.

When we take the HUMAN out of the interaction, we lose the opportunity to build relationship in that interaction. And depending on the interaction, that could be a critical mistake.

I mean, I know I'm not the first customer that just felt like a data-point, not a person.

INTENTIONAL ACTION: OPTIMIZE EACH INTERACTION

Ask yourself, "what level of support, or relationship, is NEEDED to successfully execute this interaction?" Both from an internal perspective and a client perspective.

When we think about "optimization" instead of "automation", it opens the door to a conversation about what ACTUALLY optimizes this interaction? Is it that it happens faster? Is it that everyone gets exactly the same experience? Is it that it's available at all hours? Or is there something MORE that needs to be explored in order for the experience to be optimal?

If we're looking for ways to optimize on both sides, instead of just OUR side, that's when we can REALLY make an impact with our customers.

8. Misaligned Incentives

Ooh, this is a biggie. And since we've got the leadership crowd in attendance, something that definitely deserves a seat at the table.

Hands up...who has ever been in a conversation where the VOLUME of leads (or sales) was the primary topic, and the focus on long-term relationship building and authenticity got thrown out the window for urgent delivery?

My hand is up.

And then the Marketing Team just gets asked to "bring in more leads" and people fall back to the old ways of doing that (see the section on Gimmicks above).

Marketing starts to feel pushy and transactional, which actually drives people AWAY instead of attracting them.

It's not only NOT delivering on the short-term goal, but it actively counter-acts the long-term goals simultaneously.

And let's not even talk about how the salary of a marketing team member is RARELY (if ever) tied to revenue the same way sales is 😉

Actions align with incentives, so if the incentives are whack, so too will be your actions.

INTENTIONAL ACTION: DEFINE YOUR PERFORMANCE CHALLENGE

What IS a performance challenge, you might ask?

It's the GAP between where your marketing is performing TODAY, and where you HOPE it will be performing. And when you can get VERY CLEAR on what that gap is, as well as on WHY you are going to the destination you choose, it enables you to CLOSE the gap.

And you can then align your ACTIONS to closing the gap.

And MEASURE your actions on whether or not they close the gap.

To ADJUST your actions so they CAN close the gap💡

It's an on-going, iterative process. But since that's the nature of marketing anyway, it works particularly well in this arena.

And to clarify...it's MORE than just a sales target 😉

P.S. If you'd like some help with structuring your Marketing Performance Challenge to align your activities to your results, let's chat.

Well folks, that's it for Part Two! We'll be wrapping up next week with 4 MORE Marketing Misses that can be fixed with intentional action 💖 See you then!