Why Marketing Fails: The Silo Effect

When you think of a silo, you think good thoughts: silos on a farm filled to the brim with an autumn’s grain harvest. It sounds like a perfect metaphor for a successful business marketing campaign.

So how can a silo be a bad thing?

The Silo Effect in business refers to groups of people, or groups of projects, working independently from one another. You think this lack of communication and cross-departmental support is only found in large companies.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in your own small business marketing efforts.

• You give a speech on your favorite topic, but you fail to mention your own services and how you help people around that topic.
• You mingle in a networking meeting but don’t tell them about your upcoming free webinar, or give them a way to register immediately while it’s fresh in their minds.
• You post on social media but never tell them about the podcast next week where you’ll be a guest.

The Silo Effect in small business marketing is this: the lack of coordination and integration of all your marketing techniques so that they support each other and continue to move the prospective client through your marketing system.

Introducing integrated marketing: bringing it all together.

Instead of simply doing one marketing technique then walking away, consider creating a marketing “network” of techniques where one technique encourages the prospective customer to participate in another marketing technique.

In this way, prospects who aren’t ready to buy can stay within your marketing network and continue to connect with you via all your marketing techniques.

Some examples of integrated marketing techniques:

• When giving a speech, ask the audience to sign up for your free newsletter or an upcoming free event, whatever you’re currently offering to get them on your mailing list.
• On the back of your business card, offer a free report, and give them the URL where they can download it.
• After a networking event, email your new contacts with a link to a blog post on your site which solves a problem they’re having.
• When doing a radio interview or podcast, remind people that you offer a free initial consultation and tell them how they can sign up for one.
• On your website, place a big opt-in box that tells visitors about your free monthly webinar.

Never ask your marketing techniques to stand all alone like silos in a field. Connect them together and show that path to your prospective customers so they can walk the path through your marketing techniques to your door.