I was working with a business owner recently, and during the assessment of his sales and marketing efforts, I identified a number of opportunities that could work for his business. For many, he said he tried them in the past and failed. I asked if he could quantify and he said he could not, adding that he tried SEO and Pay per Click and that his website was set up to handle leads.

When I looked deeper into those efforts, I found his business had no communications strategy. He had no idea what to say to prospects to get their attention and seek more information. He, like most business owners, was talking to himself vs his prospects. And his website did not give a prospect what they needed to make an informed decision nor did it nurture prospective customers. Without the right communication strategy, no marketing program will be effective.

If his prospects performed a Google search and came across his business organically (SEO), they would not click on his link because he wasn’t communicating what his prospects needed to get engaged. He was communicating what he liked, not what the prospect needed to hear. The same issue was found in his Pay per Click program and company website.

In other words, it wasn’t the tactic that failed, it was their communications strategy.

Google gives you only two lines to quickly get across why someone doing a search should click on your link. These are critical and will determine any program’s success or failure.

The owner also told me that the only leads he gets are from his current customers and he's not reaching or nurturing new prospects. I did a review of his website, which is where prospects go to check out a business before they engage. His analytics showed:

• That he had very little traffic to his site

• That the time visitors spent on the site was less than a minute

• That his bounce rate was over 80%

• That people were only going to one or two pages, thus not getting any engagement, or a call to action.

Here’s the bottom line. This business had no strategy to their sales and marketing efforts. There was no one on the executive team representing a voice in sales and marketing. They were not only wasting their money on efforts that were not going to succeed but missing out on new business opportunities.

If this situation sounds familiar to you, or for someone you work with, let’s talk about how together we can make the right changes that will impact the business.