Random Acts of Marketing (R.A.M.) occur when you try fitting random marketing pieces without the picture of the audience or context who might receive it. It’s like throwing darts blindfolded and hoping to hit the bullseye. It seems impossible, right?
In simpler terms, R.A.M. happens when marketing activities lack a clear strategy tied to an audience, go-to-market plan, and unique strengths. It’s about doing things just to tick boxes, rather than crafting a purposeful, audience-centric approach that aligns with business goals. And surprisingly, this is the most common approach among businesses!
When doing random acts of marketing, you not only lose credibility as a marketer in your field, but your efforts are lost, and outcomes become unpredictable. It’s forgetting about the uniqueness of your business. Without a thoughtful marketing strategy, achieving good results becomes a matter of luck rather than intention.
Most Common Mistakes That Lead to Random Acts of Marketing
Following others’ playbook
Attempting to replicate another company’s strategy, audience targeting, or marketing approach rarely brings efficient results. What works for you, doesn’t necessarily work for others. So, why would you replicate other businesses’ strategies and approach hoping to achieve the same results?
Imagine two businesses focused in the same field, say HR management software organizations. One is our client, and the other is not. How would it impact if they tried to implement the same SEO strategy as us, just because it increased our client’s traffic? Would the results be the same for both of them? Probably not.
Businesses are unique and require strategies aligned with their goals and audience demographics.
Focus your investment on ads exclusively
You don’t want to focus all your efforts on one strategy.
Overemphasis on paid advertising without integrating it into a holistic marketing strategy can lead to high costs and limited long-term growth. It’s like eating dessert before dinner. At first, you’ll feel amazing, but in the long term, you’ll feel worse than having a proper meal. Long-term success will only come with long-term effort.
Launch last-minute projects or campaigns
Procrastination is a term we’re all familiar with, and most of us experience weekly. There’s something about doing projects at the last minute that just makes us more effective. But in the future, you don’t aim to keep these practices.
Procrastinating on planning and execution often results in rushed, poorly coordinated marketing efforts that fail to resonate with the audience or achieve goals.
Covering every channel with a weak presence
Attempting to maintain a presence on every available marketing channel without sufficient resources or strategic focus prevents real engagement with potential customers.
You could easily end up in the shadows of social media if you don’t understand how your target audience interacts and engages with different platforms, or you’re uncertain about the type of consistency you should aim for permanent visibility.
If you aim to be everywhere, ensure you have the team and time to do it.
Replicating trending content
Viral videos, audio, scripts, and dances are all over social media. We could all replicate them and win thousands of views. However, copying popular content without considering its relevance to your brand or audience can undermine authenticity.
Don’t misunderstand me, trending content can be a great way to engage with people and reach wider audiences in a matter of seconds. But this should only be done if relevant to your brand and target customers.
If you replicate what’s trendy, you’ll probably end up in the eyes of everyone for a while. But do you want to be remembered for what you do, or just be one more in the crowd?
Running marketing as a sales team
Clients often misunderstand the goal of marketing teams, as if the only focus is to generate leads. A marketing strategy’s potential is commonly reduced to conversions and revenue, and even though these are a critical part of the equation, they’re not all there is.
At Flow Agency, we receive these types of questions permanently. But, limiting marketing’s role to lead generation overlooks its broader potential to build brand awareness, nurture customer relationships,
What to Do Instead?
- Set clear goals
Define specific and measurable objectives to guide your marketing efforts. Prioritize these goals strategically and break down your strategy into foundational planning, execution phases, and ongoing measurement, using KPIs and project goals to align!
This is how Emily Kramer presents it in one of her marketing guides:
- Focus on quality and not on quantity
Ensure you’re delivering high-quality content and experiences that resonate with your audience rather than simply churning out large volumes of weak pieces.
A quality piece of content can generate tons of opportunities. We recently published a study on AI Overview results and how they impact different types of keywords and rankings, especially our clients’ niches. To ensure the post’s distribution and reach to new audiences, we repurposed it on a LinkedIn post and a YouTube short:
Go to the LinkedIn post
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And this was just the beginning!
- Research product marketing
Conduct thorough research into your product’s market fit, positioning, and messaging strategies. Understanding how your product meets customer needs and differentiates from competitors enables targeted marketing!
- Understand your competition
Perform an analysis of your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, and marketing strategies. You aim to know what you’re dealing with. This insight allows you to identify gaps in the market and refine your unique value proposition.
- Know your audience
Invest time in understanding your target audience’s demographics, behaviors, preferences, and pain points. This understanding is the key to crafting personalized marketing messages that engage those who consume your content!
- Align and plan with your team
Foster alignment across your marketing team and other departments by clearly communicating strategic objectives, roles, and responsibilities. Collaboration is key!
- Measure growth
Implement measurement and analytics frameworks to track the performance of your marketing initiatives against predefined KPIs and objectives. We like to use Google Analytics 4, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console.
The quicker you analyze the data, the faster you can turn them into actionable steps for your campaigns or projects.
