Online factors make delaying message-focusing more expensive
Automation that accelerates the speed of commerce also increases the cost of delaying a message-focusing project.
Separately, while the latest analytics can be of great help to tune your message, and gauge the effectiveness of different messages to different groups, it can't help with initial message-focusing.
The cost of inaction: Fewer customers
Focusing a company's message can be a labor-intensive up-front investment. However, the cost of inaction always exceeds the costs of moving ahead.
Lead quality and quantity metrics typically double and then double again by the end of the first year.
The alternative is awful. With an unfocused message, spending more on any promotional activities, offline or online, to deliver an unclear message, without a clearly-defined target, is very inefficient.
Another cost of waiting arises from how marketing to the search engines works.
Google has always required the consistent addition of site content over time to first get its attention, and then raise a site in its search results. The time it takes to get traction keeps getting longer. More and more sites on the Web is one reason. Another is that Google has changed the format of its search results so that more advertisers, and less organic (unpaid) results are visible on the page.
