A few months ago, the ENX2 Crew had gone on a work retreat slash vacation together. A client of ours had kindly allowed us to stay at her vacation rental mansion in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, for a full week and we gladly accepted. As Nicole would say, we were truly blessed with the opportunity. As for the rest of us, we were just raring to go – a week drinking some beers and working on the beach with sand between our toes. Who wouldn’t accept? Hells yeah!
Our client had warned us beforehand that four-wheel drive was needed since the mansion was on the beach. Like right on the beach. Like here’s the beach and there’s the house right over that dune.
Since neither I nor our then-marketing assistant Logan did have a four-wheel drive vehicle, our wonderful boss Nicole had rented us an SUV for the week. With lots of beer and Logan’s friend Trevor tagging along, we headed out on the open road.
Hang on, I’m getting to the marketing bit soon. We’re getting to the good part now.
First, we left much later than anticipated because of trouble with the rental company. So, by the time we cruised into the Outer Banks area, it was way past midnight. And it was dark. Like Uber XL dark. The GPS and printed directions had led us straight to the beach. It was then when we realized that the client was not lying…we really had to drive on the beach to get to the house. Huh, who would have figured?
Finally following the directions provided by our client, we took the air out of tires and then with fingers crossed, Logan slowly began to drive on the beach. To be honest, it was rather beautiful – the moon was out and with the crashing of the waves it was very peaceful.
That was before we turned on the road to the house and got stuck in the sand. Three times. Pretty severely.
Since it was extremely late in the evening or early in the morning, depending on how you see 2 a.m., (CLOSING TIME! Ha) we decided that the car was safe to stay where it was until daybreak, where we could figure out how to dig it out successfully and get it in the driveway.
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You probably can see where this is going, right? It stayed stuck in the sand for about three days.
We tried to dig it out, but we needed assistance. It wasn’t going anywhere. Omg, like nowhere. And by the time Mike showed up with his truck to tow us out of the sand, the town sheriff had called the tow truck who then gouged my boss out of a ridiculous amount of money.
Oh, and it was cold and mostly cloudy the whole week. Yeah. Best laid plans….
Here’s the marketing bit. I told you I would get there soon.
Getting stuck in the sand can happen to a lot of your marketing efforts. Everything is going swimmingly, you’re seeing great results, and then all of a sudden nothing moves. You’re stuck. Try to go forward, you even try to go back but all that happens is a spinning of the wheels. This is how lots of marketing campaigns fail – they get stuck, they hit their heads, and then they have to pull themselves out of the hole which may cost a lot of money. Oh, you may try to dig yourself out. But all that accomplishes is spreading sand all over the place.
So, what can you do when your marketing campaign stalls? Is there a way to pull yourself out without destroying the whole thing or spending lots of money?
Here are a few suggestions:
- Try a different approach. Sounds pretty reasonable, right? In fact, that’s probably what you’ve already done. But it’s important to remember your campaign has been working all this time; maybe all that’s needed is a fresh approach. Changing the wording in your ads. Change up the graphics to something a little jazzier. Maybe throw in a podcast or video. Think outside that box. As our awesome boss says over and over and over. And over. GET CREATIVE!
- See what was successful before and reuse. Sometimes it’s easier to just reuse what worked in the past. For example, if you’ve gotten a lot of success out of using testimonials in your social media posts, but stopped using them for fear of overuse, maybe it’s time to revisit.
- Get your audience involved. And the most important piece to getting unstuck is paying attention to your target audience. What do they want from you? What do they need? Put yourself in their shoes and figure out why your message is not reaching them.
- Time to start something new. Maybe your strategy just ran out of steam. It happens, your audience maybe is tired of hearing about a certain product or service. Maybe it’s time to start with a new, fresh idea. Keep trying. Over and over and over. It will come. Persistence is key. Never give up. As Nicole always says, good things are coming! But you have to work hard, be kind, and believe that it is already happening. That is the most difficult part of all.
So, to finish up the Saga of the Sand, we did get the car back and drove back to Pennsylvania with sand everywhere and no beer. It was a wonderful time but next time, we’re going to rent a Hummer. Now that is something worth believing for!
