Ad hoc marketing helps B2B marketing teams fill gaps in a marketing schedule, but ad hoc marketing is not a model that drives optimal marketing results and ROI; rather, the opposite.
Ad hoc marketing consumes more time and money than a solid marketing plan and strategy. In addition, ad hoc marketing efforts have a limited impact and could tarnish your brand and contaminate your customer and prospect database.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss the perils of ad hoc marketing and how to avoid them. We’ll also talk about the importance of having a sound marketing strategy and how it can impact your ROI. So, if you want to make the most of your marketing dollars, read on!
Peril #1 – Inconsistent Messaging
Ad hoc marketing contributes to inconsistent branding and messaging and can make your company appear disorganized, unpredictable, and unfamiliar. Without a long-term plan, your messaging ends up, well, messy.
A marketing strategy is the foundation for effective marketing campaigns and ensures relevant, targeted messaging that guides potential leads through the marketing funnel from beginning to end.
Peril #2 – Low Engagement
Running ad hoc campaigns can make your organization less recognizable to prospects and may even confuse or bother them; your campaigns are ineffective and actively turn people away from engaging with your brand.
Even if your organization has adopted email, advertising, and social templates, low engagement is typical when campaign volume, cadence, and messaging appear random.
Peril #3 – Tarnishing the Brand
Ad hoc marketing can harm your brand, damage your organization’s reputation or cause other problems. For example, if you send out emails that are irrelevant to the recipient, you risk being marked as spam and could forever impair your ability to reach that person or company.
Organizations sometimes send newsletters to their entire database, from the CEO down. However, if you are unknown to the CEO, or any prospect for that matter, you risk tarnishing your brand with marketing communications that are not relevant.
Peril #4 – Elusive Marketing
One of the biggest perils of ad hoc marketing is that it’s costly. Without a robust plan and strategy, organizations end up spending more money than they need on marketing activities that may not even produce results.
In addition, ad hoc marketing can also be very time-consuming. Marketing teams usually spend precious hours on ad hoc activities that don’t deliver results.
So What’s the Fix for Ad Hoc Marketing?
The best way to avoid these perils is to develop a marketing plan and strategy. A strategy should shift most of your marketing efforts to be planned and thus ensure focus on the optimal activities in the most effective way possible. By developing a plan, you avoid the pitfalls of ad hoc marketing and set up the marketing organization for success.