The 11 Most common Marketing Mistakes

The 11 items that follow are summaries of the areas where most businesses go wrong and waste their money.

1. Being company or product-centric, instead of customer-centric
This is the biggest problem I see with how the majority of businesses approach their market. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard or read something like “In business, all you have to do is find a need and fill it.” It’s sound advice, but it’s not the way most businesses work. Instead, the come up with a product and then try to figure out a way to convince people that they need it. They focus on how great what they offer is, instead of worrying about how they can make someone’s life better.

2. Not having a clear, concise and believable message
Trying to be all things to all people is a way to ensure that you won’t be anything to anybody. If you can’t ruthlessly hone your message to the point where it is very quickly obvious how you can greatly improve the prospect’s life in some way, your message will never be heard. People will not try to figure out what you’re saying. In fact, most will actively ignore you.

3. Not effectively communicating clear advantages
Consumers look at your business skeptically. Everything you say is viewed with a cynical eye. People need to be convinced that you can quickly and clearly help them. In an age of instant gratification, patience is very short. If you don’t communicate the advantages you offer to your prospect’s situation, you’re dismissed.

4. Not differentiating from the competition
This point ties in directly with #3. It’s not enough to just show how you can make the consumer’s life better. You also have to show how you can do it better than anyone else.
Why you, and not your competition? Most businesses have a host of competitors who are right beside them in the yellow pages or just a click away on the internet. Why, in comparing you side by side with everyone else, would someone decide that you are the best choice? If you don’t tell them in terms that emphasize what is important to them, they’ll move on. And they won’t stop to compare every point you make side by side with your competition. Consumers continually make snap or semi-informed judgments. Grab them quickly or someone else will.

5. Having no defined marketing goals
Every marketing piece you produce must have a clearly defined purpose. For instance, if you place an advertisement in a magazine, what are you trying to accomplish with it? If you said “We’re trying to get more business,” you’re not being specific enough. What exactly do you want to happen? Are you trying to generate phone calls? Do you want people to come see you? To visit your website? It’s great if overall revenue rises after implementing a campaign, but without knowing which elements are performing, you won’t know exactly why.

6. Having poor marketing materials
If you were going out on a first date, would you show up unshowered, with messy hair and dirty clothes, assuming that your date would look past all that to “the real you?” Probably not, and neither will consumers. We all make judgments based on appearance. If your marketing materials are poor, you’ll be perceived the same way. It won’t matter if you have the greatest product in the world, you’ll never get the chance to show it off.

7. Being generic
Superlatives in advertising are ineffective. There are so many INCREDIBLE!!! offers out there that incredible is the new average. Nobody believes that your offer is incredible if you tell them it’s incredible. Same goes for other bombastic words. If you want someone to believe what you’re saying, get specific. Instead of just telling someone that your selection is gigantic, tell them exactly how gigantic it is. In one sentence you can tell them how many varieties, colors, manufacturers, etc. you offer. People will believe specifics much more than superlatives.

8. Being too diluted
If you’re trying to say everything in each marketing effort, you’re wasting your time and your money. Instead of trying to make four separate points with one advertisement, for example, you’re much better off making just your strongest point with the advertisement. Make another point with another ad. Remember- if you try to tell someone more than one thing, especially when they don’t want to hear it in the first place, they won’t come away with anything. Target your message clearly, always.

9. Not reaching the right market
Obvious in concept, but difficult in execution. Reaching the right people is usually an inexact science. And most businesses haven’t researched who their best customer really is. They’re trying to sell everything they have to everyone they can reach. By narrowing the focus to a tightly defined market, impact per impression will be much greater. Because the scope is narrower, the repetition can be higher for the same investment. And that usually translates into better results.

10. Not testing
A slight change of your headline can result in a dramatic difference in the response rate. A small shift in the focus of the offer can increase effectiveness by several times. But how do you find these things out before you’ve spent your marketing budget? It’s simple- testing. Test your advertisement or offer on a small scale. Track the results. Change one thing and one thing only, like the headline, offer or guarantee, and run it again on a small scale. Feedback will be quick and easy to gauge if you’re tracking the results. Only when you have a clear winner should you commit your marketing budget.

11. Not tracking results
How do you know if what you’re doing is actually working? Not carefully tracking responses will lead to confusion, wasted time and money. Asking customers where they heard about you and using promotion-specific codes are just a couple of ways to monitor the source of your business. The data from this allows you to quickly dump your underperforming marketing and redirect the money into profitable areas.

About the Author
Derek Fisch is founder and President of Velocity Media, the leading marketing and advertising agency for small business. http://www.velocitymediainc.com .

NOTE: You’re welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a link to your reprint to derek@velocitymediainc.com.

Filed under: Small Business Marketing , Marketing Mistakes

Customer Engagement – LinkedIn Tips

Derek Fisch  |  www.velocitymediainc.com

Social media presents one of the best ways to stay engaged with your marketplace. LinkedIn is one of its most useful tools. The Linked blog is full of tips and ideas for getting the most from the site.

Here is the link: http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/05/12/jennifer-granito-what-events-are-my-connections-attending/

Remember, LinkedIn is a tool – a very useful one. People who know how to use it can reap great rewards. You definitely get out of it what you put in.

Filed under: Small Business Marketing , Customer Engagement, Linked In, Social Media

Why Small Businesses are Doomed

Derek Fisch  |  www.velocitymediainc.com

As a businessperson, you face the same task day after day: how to find enough customers and generate enough revenue to keep the doors open.  It’s a never-ending battle that most businesses eventually lose.

You have enough to worry about with customers, employees, legal, government, taxes and on and on.  You know your business, but you just can’t be an expert in all these areas.  And when it comes to marketing, the task can be overwhelming. 

There is a giant gap that small to medium sized businesses fall into.  It’s the gap between boutique designer and powerful ad agency. 

Let me explain:  If you need to market your business, who do you turn to? 

The design agencies can usually make something look good, but they don’t know beans about marketing and how to get customers to actually buy.  Big ad agencies won’t touch you unless you have an enormous budget. 

So you’re stuck trying to hobble together a plan that will bring in customers.  It’s no wonder that most businesses fail.

What can you do? Click this link to a free e-book: “How to Quickly and Affordably Increase Your Business”.

Filed under: Small Business Marketing , Business Increase, Customer Acquisition, Finding New Customers, Small Business Marketing

Is Direct Mail Dead?

Derek Fisch | www.velocitymediainc.com

Open your mailbox and you’ll see that businesses are still using plenty of direct mail. But is it effective any more?

Here is a link to a blog post from The Branding Strategy Insider that examines this issue:

http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2008/12/direct-mail-marketings-negative-tidal-wave.html .

The post is entitled “Direct Mail: Marketing’s Negative Tidal Wave” and offers insightful perspective on direct mail and how it meshes with your brand.

Filed under: Small Business Marketing , Branding, Direct Mail, Direct Marketing

The World’s Most Important Marketing Concept

www.velocitymediainc.com

Incorporate this into your marketing and watch your sales soar

The world’s most important marketing concept. Wow, pretty grandiose title. But this is one area where understatement just won’t do. If more companies understood this one concept, their marketing would actually stand a chance of doing its job.

Before we get to this big idea, though, let me define what the job of marketing actually is. Ultimately, it should be designed to convince people to do business with you. That’s it. Every thing else related to marketing should all be done with that end result in mind, because that’s where it should all lead. Product, pricing, placement, promotion, and people need to all point in this direction. Every campaign aimed at increasing mindshare, raising product recognition level, penetrating new markets, or any other specific short-term goal is designed to convince people to do business with the marketer. Or at least it should be. So how do you do that?

I’m not going to talk specific tactics in this article, but rather about the common unifying concept, which if understood, will direct a marketing campaign to success. The idea is actually so simple that you might be disappointed. But it’s so powerful that it will determine the outcome of your marketing. Here it is: everything you do in marketing should clearly and explicitly tell the consumer how you will make his or her life quickly and dramatically better. If you can communicate that concept in a way that the consumer believes, and more effectively than your competition, you’ll never lack for business.

The problem that the overwhelming majority of businesses I work with have is that they are approaching their marketing from the wrong end. They’re focused on their company and their product rather than their customers. The ask questions like “How can we show people how great our product is?” rather than “How can we show people how much we can improve their lives?”

I often get initial disagreement from company owners and managers when I first propose this. To most of them it’s a completely new concept. They have, since the beginning of their business life, been trying to figure out how to outshout the competition. The problem is, they’ve been shouting the wrong thing. For those who disagree on this point, let me make this statement: the consumer doesn’t care a bit about your product or service. They really don’t. They care about what your product or service does for them. Or in other words, how it makes their life better. The product or service is just a means to an end.

Most marketers have gotten comfortable with the idea of selling benefits rather than features. But let me take that one step further by introducing a concept I call the Ultimate Life Benefit (ULB). The ULB goes beyond selling benefits. It shows the consumer how his or her life will be quickly and appreciably improved. And most products have many ULB’s. To get to this way of thinking, list the benefits of your product or service and then ask yourself “And then what happens?” For example: Feature: SPF 90 Benefit: Protection from sunburn ULB: Your kids don’t suffer pain or skin damage. They are happy and healthy. See what I’m getting at here? If you just go as far as selling the benefit, you haven’t communicated to the consumer how his or her life will clearly be better. The benefit is “Protection from sunburn.” Go ahead and tell the consumer that they’ll be protected from sunburn. Repeat it as many times as you like. Shout it loudly. You’ll get some results, but not great results. Shift your message to showing the results of the benefit, and the mental connection is made quickly and completely in the mind of the viewer. Show them exactly how your product delivers the benefit and produces the ULB and you’ve got them.

The trick here is to show exactly how your product or service leads to the ULB. Don’t just say or imply that it does, but rather demonstrate it explicitly. Don’t assume that the consumer will make the mental connection. I don’t know about you, but most people are too busy to figure out what advertisers are trying to say. Next time you’re watching television, pay attention to what advertisers are showing you. Most national advertisers are showing ULB’s. One of the most frequent and most obvious is commercials that show how using their product will make you more attractive to the opposite sex. Use this razor and get the girl. Use this mouthwash and get the girl. Drive this car and get the girl. Wear these clothes and get the girl. You get the point.

The successful ads are the ones that make the connection clear. Car commercials are another good example. They don’t just say that the car is fast. They show you how you can enjoy unlimited freedom with that kind of horsepower. Jewelry advertisers don’t just talk about the total carat weight of their diamond jewelry. They show you the reactions of your friends when they see your new necklace. A lot of advertisements miss completely, though. The advertiser is trying hard to get us to associate their product with something. But they fail to communicate it in a way that causes the viewer to make the mental connection. The commercial makes no point and is quickly forgotten.

Even the most mundane product can benefit by incorporating a persuasive ULB. Whatever you sell, there are benefits to it. Take copier paper for instance. Your paper may cost less, or cause less jamming, or maybe it’s brighter and sturdier. Whatever it is, it has a benefit. So then what happens? If it jams less, then you can concentrate on the important things, instead of continually fixing the copier. You get more work done, you make more money or get a promotion or whatever you choose to show. The benefit is that it jams less. But the ultimate benefit goes beyond that.

Every product has at least one ULB, most have quite a few. Find them and communicate them to the consumer, and they’ll have no reason to resist. They’ll see that it’s in their best interest to do business with you. And once that happens, just make sure you’re stocked up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Derek Fisch is founder and President of Velocity Media, a full service marketing and advertising firm | www.velocitymediainc.com .

NOTE: You’re welcome to “reprint” this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “about the author” info at the end), and you send a link to your reprint to design@velocitymediainc.com.

Filed under: Marketing Philosophy