Ten Big Marketing Mistakes
How to Avoid & Capitalise on Them
1. Advertising
The simple fact is that most advertising simply does not work. Unless your business is the size of McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, advertising is generally a complete waste of money. If you are spending money on advertising and you do not know if it is working, delivering a substantial return for every pound spent, stop it – immediately.
2. Copying competitors
Lots of business owners fall into this trap. They see competitors in a magazine, at a trade show or running a PPC Campaign and then copy them because otherwise they feel left behind. Unless you know what return they make from their marketing activity there’s no reason to assume it’s successful.
3. Failing to measure
If you do not measure results and the return, you do not know if you are making or losing money on each activity. If you don’t know this, you are working blind and you cannot make informed decisions on what marketing to stop and what marketing to roll out on a larger scale.
4. Failure to test
Clients often say things like, “Oh no, we can’t try direct mail, it would be too expensive if it doesn’t work.” These views are common and totally false. If you carefully test various marketing methods before spending large amounts of money you will never take an uneducated risk.
5. Relying on one type of marketing
A healthy marketing mix is essential. There is no silver bullet. If you rely on just one type of marketing you are not only vulnerable to competitors, you are missing out on lots of opportunities, which can be yours by utilising then carefully testing and measuring new types of marketing.
6. Buy and blast approach
There are companies that bought a database of potential customers (or so they thought!), created a one-off marketing campaign, executed the campaign and got a limited, or even worse, no response. This then puts them off forever. Create your own list and send everyone on it things of interest and value to build trust with them regularly. That way, when they are ready to buy what you sell they use you.
7. Dropping the ball
Within small and medium sized businesses, when things are going well marketing activity stops. When things are going badly and cut backs are being made, marketing is the first thing to go. Most business people don’t realise how incredibly crucial it is to be marketing continuously at all these times, for the long-term stability of the business.
8. Ignoring your customers
On average, 80% of your turnover comes from the top 20% of your customers. There is guaranteed, untapped wealth sat in your customer list today that can be unlocked by simply sending an email, picking up the phone, writing a letter etc. Contacting your existing customer list is the best guaranteed way of generating more business quickly.
9. Not offering guarantees
Offering a guarantee with your product or service has an incredible effect on leads generated, conversions and sales. The thing that puts people off doing this is they assume a guarantee has to be a 100% money back guarantee. It doesn’t. It can be a delivery guarantee, a quality-based guarantee, even an environmentally friendly guarantee. Many companies are actually honouring and delivering guarantees without marketing them.
10. Marketing by committee
Everyone has an opinion on marketing. Your colleagues, friends, employees, family, even people you have never met before will tell you their opinion on your marketing and promotional activities. Define your target audience, formulate a marketing strategy and plan, then implement it. Testing and measuring different methods and messages. Record the response rates they deliver. Only change the things the results tell you to and over time your marketing will become both effective and powerful. Then you can be confident on just your own opinion, plus of course that of Calibre!
Don’t make marketing mistakes. Implement a strategy and activities that will help you fly higher than your competitors. Contact Calibre today.
