The 5 Most Common Marketing Mistakes
Why do companies make marketing mistakes?
People make marketing mistakes for a variety of reasons. Mostly — it’s due to inexperience or the fact that some business owners are trying to do many different jobs and they cannot put the time into their marketing efforts needed for a successful initiative. Learning the most common marketing mistakes however, is the first step to helping you to avoid them:
1. Our market is everybody!
Business owners don’t research their markets to identify on one or two segments that are most likely to buy their product or service. Instead, they try to sell to everyone, which is both expensive and exhausting
Solution: Segment and Target — Define market segments and develop specific marketing strategies for each targeted segment.
2. If we just tell the people we have <latest gizmo>, they’ll buy it from us.
Entrepreneurs assume that the general public is going to immediately understand and buy their new product/service.
Solution: Marketing Communication — Develop a strategic marketing communication campaign for your product or service. Talk to your market consistently via press releases, articles, emails, newsletters advertising, telemarketing, etc. Customers buy based on name recognition.
3. Why pay for advertising when we can get the media to write about us for free?
Owners allow the media to position their company with a few news articles.
Solution: Integrated Marketing — Integrate a full marketing campaign and give everything a marketing twist, from business cards and phone messages, to flyers, email campaigns, letter and phone calls. Media relations is an important part of a marketing campaign, but it is not a stand-alone marketing effort.
4. We ran a campaign but we don’t know if it worked.
Entrepreneurs launch a campaign without measuring results: this is a waste of time and money.
Solution: Measure Results — Spend time determining whether the campaign actually worked — i.e. — generated sales or sales leads. Be sure to determine the metrics in advance. Look at elements such as cost per lead and pipeline growth. Refine your next campaign based on the results.
5. We’ll show THEM who can make the best product.
The business owner allows the competition to set the benchmark for what is good or what your market needs.
Solution: Superior Marketing! — Be market driven. Let your customers dictate what features and services make a difference. You’ll develop a superior product and gain an advantage in the market.
For information on how to avoid these marketing mistakes, contact MultiPlanet Marketing today!