Marketing Mistakes that impact your effectiveness.

Wendy Maynard talks about the 5 Biggest Marketing Mistakes That Hurt Your Profits and I have added my dialogue to her five key points.


1. Thinking You Can Be All Things to All People
Don't try and be all things to all people or you will dilute your marketing impact, confuse your customers and make your marketing spend less effective. A target market allows you to talk to your audience making them feel you really identify with their needs. Once you have your niche you can tailor solutions and become an expert in your customer eyes. You can make your advertising spend more effective because you will understand what they read, what websites they visit and what issues they are facing that your product or service can overcome.

2. Doing Business without Quantifiable Marketing Goals
If you don't measure how can you know if it is working. There is always a way to measure. Now days there are such good tracking tools for the web, email, blog and direct mail campaigns. It is important to measure the effectiveness of campaigns so you can adapt and make them more and more successful. You need to set in place a goal of a marketing campaign from the outset so you know what you are aiming at. Otherwise what is the point? Just to have a website because your competitors has one is not a compelling reason and frankly a waste of money. But to use it as a way to build your customer base a referral tool and a knowledge centre is a good set of objectives that can be measured.

3. Not Realizing the Lifetime Value of Your Customers
It is far more important to keep a satisfied existing customer than to go chasing new ones. A satisfied new customer who is loyal will choose your brand over others even when there is special offers, will refer others to your product, will buy off you more frequently and can be a great source of testimonials. To do this requires effort on your behalf. You need to treat them well, with respect. Communicate regularly, understand their needs and delight and excite them by exceeding their expectations every time. I would put every marketing dollar I could behind this marketing strategy before I would spend 1 dollar on attracting new customers with advertising spend.

4. Trying to Market without a Unique Core Message
What a confusing irrelevant and mixed message you could be sending out to the marketplace with out identifying and educating customers on your unique proposition. Without a clearly defined marketing message you are making the barriers to customers understanding and then buying your product or service too great. Can you tell someone you meet what you do in one sentence? Can your employees If not start working on it. Everyone in your value chain benefits from a well defined value proposition. T
his is what we do... What problem do you solve? Talk about it in customer terms that meet a need. What results do you produce?Provide evidence and it reduces the risk the customer sees in terms of buying your product/service. Offer proof. Use testimonials, differentiation from your competitors, what are the differences? What is in it for them?

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." ~Peter F. Drucker

5. Having Inconsistent, Unprofessional Marketing Materials

You marketing collateral is your face to your customers. It says something about your professionalism, reliablity and consistency. If you have produced your business cards, website and brochures in-house chances are they are not professional enough. Make the first impression a good one and invest in a brand presence that resignates with your customer base addes value to your value proposition and can be replicated consistently through your marketing tools.

Strategic marketing materials will reward you again and again by driving more customers to your company and help you to make a great first impression.
Professional, high-quality marketing tools will move your prospects closer to making a purchase. Remember, if a prospective customer views your materials as unprofessional or confusing, you will lose them to a competitor. If you want more business, make sure your materials are remarkable!


"Marketing is everything you do to make sure your customers find out about, and buy, your products and services." ~Bob Serling
"Create remarkable products that the right people seek out." Seth Godin