The 13 Fatal Marketing Mistakes - Part 1
To be successful and profitable, you must START using the most effective marketing strategies possible. Less obvious, is the fact that you must also STOP using the most ineffective, money-wasting marketing strategies. I call them The 13 Fatal Marketing Mistakes.
While this list doesn't cover all of the possible marketing mistakes, it does describe some of the most expensive, destructive and most common made by many small business owners.
It's relatively easy to produce profitable results with a well-planned, tested and proven marketing strategy. However, it's even easier to lose thousands of dollars by making any of the following 13 Fatal Marketing Mistakes.
1. TRYING TO GENERATE SALES WITH THE ONE-STEP MARKETING STRATEGY
This is the most basic marketing strategy used by most small business owners today. It's everywhere.
It consists of an ad, flyer or other marketing device that simply announces the business name, possibly lists a few basic features of the product or service and ends with an address and phone number.
The prospect is now expected to respond to this type of marketing piece by immediately purchasing the product or service.
Unless you are offering an extremely high-demand, hard-to-get product/service (an original Van Gogh painting, Super bowl tickets, etc.) this marketing strategy almost always results in little or no response.
This strategy totally disregards the psychological buying sequence of consumers. It's very much like walking up to a stranger at a party and asking Would you marry me? What do you think the response would be?
2. NOT KNOWING WHICH OF YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS ARE PRODUCING RESULTS AND WHICH ARE BIG MONEY-WASTERS
Even new businesses are investing in up to a dozen marketing devices at any given time. Not only are we talking about traditional media, like newspaper or Yellow Page ads but many others that may not be as obvious.
These marketing devices are either contributing to your business profit or destroying it. Most business owners don't have a clue as to which is which.
If they did, they could easily guarantee increasing their profitable results by investing more in the winning devices and eliminating the money-wasting losing devices.
3. EXPECTING YOUR PROSPECTS TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO
Never, never, never assume. Take a look at most small business ads and you'll see that the business owners are almost always assuming that the reader/prospect will know exactly what they want them to do . . . without telling them.
At the bottom of the ad there will be a phone number and an address. Usually nothing more. Ask one of these business owners what they wanted the prospect to do after reading their ad and they will most likely reply, Buy my product! Isn't it obvious??
The answer is a resounding No!
For one, there is rarely enough information in the typical marketing piece for a consumer to make an immediate buying decision. Therefore, that can't be the action expected from the consumer.
Second, the marketing competition for the prospect's consumer dollars is fierce. The prospect is usually exposed to dozens of ads for basically the same product/ service. Obviously, he or she is not going to take action on every single ad.
How do you insure that they will respond to your marketing piece and take the specific action you intended?
Certainly, not by assuming that they will know or figure out what you want them to do.
In order for a business owner to tell prospects exactly what action to take next, the business owner must know what that action should be. Once you know the psychological buying sequence the next expected action becomes obvious.
4. EXPECTING YOUR PROSPECTS TO CALL FOR MORE INFORMATION
Closely related to fatal mistake number 3, is the marketing piece that again simply announces the business name, lists a few basic features of the product or service, ends with an address and phone number . . . and then asks the prospect to Call for More Information.
One of the last things a prospect wants, is to feel dumb. What information should they ask for? Does this mean that the business doesn't have a brochure or any other literature? Are they going to have to take notes?? Will there be a test?
The other thing no prospect wants is to feel pressured. Whether it's true or not, the average prospect assumes that they'll get a high-pressured sales pitch if they call. Most do not want to risk this pain. Therefore, the Call for More Information tag is almost always ignored.
While some prospects may not have a problem responding to this vague directive, the majority do. If you doubt this . . . try putting it at the bottom of your marketing pieces. You'll soon be convinced that few prospects, if any, respond to the Call for More Information fatal marketing mistake.
5. FOCUSING YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS ON YOU OR YOUR COMPANY
It seems natural to tell your prospects about you and your company. We're proud of what we do and how we do it and we assume that our prospects will be impressed and motivated to take action.
We've been in business for 16 years...
We are an award winning, cutting-edge organization...
We are equipped with the latest micro-techno, laser-guided, nuclear-activated widget-gizmos...
Too often these phrases evoke the following responses from prospects:
So what?
Big deal.
Who cares?
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that your marketing materials shouldn't include background information about you and your company and/or specifications about your product/service. I'm saying that this should be supportive information, not your primary marketing message.
It's a fatal marketing mistake to think that prospects care about the same things you care about. They rarely do.
However, they do care deeply about something entirely different. Once you know what that is, and you address it powerfully and clearly in your marketing, you will begin to draw prospects to you like a magnet.
6. NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE MANY FREE OR LOW-COST MARKETING METHODS AVAILABLE
Ask the typical small business owner what marketing is, and he/she will probably reply, Advertising.
What kinds of advertising?
Yellow Page ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads, radio ads, television ads, billboards, bus cards, Val-Pak mailings, etc.
While all of these advertising devices can certainly be a part of a successful marketing strategy, there are also dozens of low-cost and no-cost marketing methods available to the small business marketer.
By simply discovering and applying these simple low-cost, no-cost methods, you will be able to significantly stretch the effectiveness and profitability of your marketing efforts.
7. COPYING THE MISTAKES OF YOUR COMPETITORS
If everyone else is doing it, then it must be the right thing to do. Remember mom's admonition, If everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you want to jump too?
Look at the local, small business ads in any newspaper and you will find the same basic format, same basic message, same basic strategy (see Fatal Marketing Mistake No. 1). . . and the same basic results; little or no response.
We feel safe in the crowd. Safe doing what everyone else is doing. We also assume that if it works for them, it can work equally well for us.
Unfortunately, a business's success is rarely from one element in their marketing strategy. Their success is the result of many diverse marketing elements; from their location, to their possible lack of competition, to their personality and abundance or lack of marketing aggressiveness. But we rarely take all of these strategic elements into consideration when copying our competitors.
Copying a single marketing element from a competitor is like reaching into their pile of puzzle pieces, pulling out one piece and then trying to make it fit into your puzzle. It rarely works because your marketing puzzle is unique and each piece must fit perfectly with all of your other pieces.
In addition, whatever success a competitor may be experiencing can often be from a few of their less obvious or visible marketing methods. Often the highly visible element (ad, flyer, brochure, etc.) is one of the least effective. You end up copying the profit losers, rather than developing your own profit winners.
Continued in Part 2 . . .
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Copyright (c) 2002, Joe Gracia
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Written By: Joe Gracia