Is Your Marketing a Haunted House?
Is Your Marketing a Haunted House?
🕒 3 min read
Every October, the haunted houses open their doors. Cobwebs in the corners, floors that creak, a phone that rings with nobody on the other end. It's fun for one night. It's a lot less fun when it describes your marketing.
Most distributors have a few ghosts hiding in their marketing. Not because anyone is careless, but because everyone is busy, and marketing is the room nobody walks into until company comes over. Here are the rooms worth checking before your customers do.
The Dusty Website
The "News" section was last updated two years ago. The team page still shows people who retired. The product lines changed, but the website didn't. Customers check your website before they ever call you. If it looks abandoned, they start to wonder what else is.
From our files: We know of a company that is eager to acquire contacts and ultimately clients with long-term contracts. The trouble is, none of their published phone numbers go anywhere...not even voicemail!
The fix: Walk through your site once a quarter the way a customer would. Update anything with a date, a name, or a photo.
The Abandoned Social Page
A company LinkedIn page with a handful of followers and a last post from... a while ago. It's still one of the first things that comes up when someone searches your name.
The fix: You don't need to post every day. Post consistently, ask your people to share, and invite your connections to follow the page.
The Cobwebbed Blog
Old posts with broken links, missing images, or examples that haven't aged well. Search engines notice. So do readers.
The fix: Refresh a few older posts each week. Fix the links, update the examples, and point readers to your newer content. Small, steady updates keep the whole house looking lived-in.
The Contact Form to Nowhere
The "Contact Us" form sends emails to someone who left three years ago. The phone number on the brochure rings to a line nobody answers. A customer reaching out is the best thing that can happen to your business. Don't let them knock on a door nobody opens.
The fix: Test every form, email address, and phone number yourself. Then set a reminder to do it again.
The Ghosts in Your Database
From our files: When River Heights Consulting ran a large customer survey for an irrigation company, we started with a list of about 300 names. A surprising number of email addresses bounced, and phone numbers were no longer in service. Some contacts had switched companies. Some had retired. One, sadly, had passed away. The list looked full, but much of it was haunted by people who had moved on long ago.
Your customer list is probably no different. Every outdated contact is a conversation that never happens, and your marketing is only as good as the list it goes to.
The fix: Clean your contact list at least once a year. Ask your salespeople and customer service team to flag changes as soon as they hear about them.
Turn the Lights On
Haunted houses are only scary because nobody has taken care of them. Your marketing doesn't need a full renovation. It just needs someone to open the doors now and then, dust the corners, and make sure the lights still work.
Not sure what's lurking in your marketing? River Heights Consulting can help you find the cobwebs and clear them out, no ghost hunters required.
Jenny Shannon is the Director of Communications at River Heights Consulting, where she has spent more than 15 years keeping the lights on in RHC's marketing. Before RHC, she managed apartment communities and condo associations, so she learned early that every building needs regular upkeep, digital ones included. These days she's the one testing contact forms, chasing bounced emails, and sweeping the cobwebs off The Distributor Channel, flashlight in hand.
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