Ten Common Marketing Mistakes
If it feels like your marketing efforts are an exercise in futility,
you may be making one these errors.
by Steve McKee
I CAN’T TELL you how many times I’ve heard this refrain, or a variation of
it: “We tried _____ marketing tactic. It doesn’t work.” While it may be true
that a given approach is ill-suited for a particular industry, audience or
situation, in my experience the tactic is less often to blame than the
implementation of it. In fact, many companies make mistake after mistake
based on gaps in their understanding of how marketing really works. Here’s a
quick review of 10 of the most common errors to help you avoid the worst of
them:
1. Aiming at everyone. No company can be all things to all
people; as much of a cliché as that is, it’s true. Companies paint
themselves into a corner because of a misplaced fear that by targeting one
group they’ll be turning away others. But aiming at everyone is an oxymoron.
The best marketers understand that by narrowing their target audience they
can increase the intensity of their brand’s appeal, piquing interest and
driving margins. You’re better off being the first choice of 10% of the
population than being one of 10 options for everyone.
2. Betting on rationality. This mistake is subtle but
dangerous. Marketing planning is often a left-brain effort, where rational
exercises like determining budgets and plotting strategy take place. But
consumers don’t make decisions where logic and argument reside; research
suggests that emotion not only influences most purchase decisions, it tends
to trump reason along the way. Don’t try to convince your prospects; connect
with them. They’re depending on their gut more than you realize.
3. Letting market research trump everything. Too many
marketers invoke data as if information had mystical qualities. To say
market research has its limitations is to understate the point; some of it
can be flat-out misleading. Consumers don’t always realize how they feel,
what they think or why they do what they do, and even when they’re well
aware they won’t always tell you the truth. Research is a valuable tool in a
marketer’s shed, but used improperly it can cost you a finger (and perhaps
your head).
4. Getting seduced by the new. We live in fast-paced,
exciting times, with new marketing and media options sprouting up every day.
While they’re all worth a look, none is worth upending your efforts for.
It’s easy to be seduced by the siren songs of new tactics, but wisdom says
to stick to what works while you evaluate what might. Some company has to be
first to give something a shot, but it should rarely (if ever) be yours.
5. Advertising your aspirations. We all aspire to make
quality job No. 1, offer uncompromising service and demonstrate amazing
results, but no company can fully achieve any of these. Advertising your
aspirations only invites people to catch you failing to achieve them, and
these days it’s easier than ever for them to spread the word. Aspirations
are, by definition, promises that can’t be fully kept. Don’t announce them,
just try to live by them — use them within the walls to rally your troops,
but don’t let them escape to rouse the ire of your customers.
6. Following the leader. Competition is awesome in the
abstract. When it gets concrete it’s just plain hard, especially if your
competitors are pounding the market with claims you think you can match or
beat. It’s tempting to try and one-up the other guys, especially if they’re
the market leader. Do so, however, and you may reinforce their strengths and
derail your differentiation. Don’t try to be better. Just be different.
7. Seeking approval by committee. If you can’t agree with
your family on what type of pie to serve at Thanksgiving, how can you expect
a roomful of managers to agree on something as subjective as marketing
communications? Everyone’s taste is unique, and the fewer people involved in
the creative approval chain, the better. If you try to please everyone,
you’ll end up with a gooey mess that nobody wants to eat. The best committee
is a committee of one.
8. Starving the budget. An anemic marketing budget may save
bucks but it will cost business. If you don’t have a line item on your
profit-and-loss statement with a reasonable percentage allocated to
marketing, you’re not a real business. Notice I said marketing, not
advertising — paid media may very well not be right for your situation, but
every company must somehow get its message out. Find the way and spend the
money. And keep in mind that most do-it-yourself marketers shouldn’t be
doing it themselves. Pay for professional help.
9. Anticipating customers will act very quickly. When was
the last time you leapt out of your recliner to do exactly as an ad
instructed? Marketing doesn’t work that way, and as consumers we all
understand that. Yet when we slip into our desk chairs we somehow expect
marketing to show immediate results. It takes time to seed a message, and
credibility grows through consistency. Plan your efforts well, and stick
with them. As obvious as it sounds, every time you start over, you’re
starting over.
10. Chickening out. Plans are terrific, but plans are just
words on paper. It’s amazing how much time and money companies spend getting
their acts together, only to succumb to stage fright when it’s time for the
curtain to rise. It’s easy to come up with reasons not to do something,
surrendering to fear of the unknown. But just as writers aren’t writers
unless they write, marketers aren’t marketers unless they market. Not
everything you do will work, but with each mistake you’ll be learning and
growing.
New Google feature may change your world
Do you already have a Google+ page set up for your business or do you see
that as just one more time-wasting social networking headache? If you rely on
website traffic from natural search results on Google, you may not have any say
about the matter. The search company just launched “Search Plus Your World”
(SPYW), which is the merger of personalized search with social search, including
the addition of relevant Google+ results displayed on Google’s search engine
pages.
Google has been personalizing search engine results since 2005 and included
social search results since 2009, but SPYW is a bit different. For example,
there’s a new “Personal Results” view that personalizes the listings you get
based on both your own behavior and social connections, along with content
that’s been shared with you through the Google+ social network.
And while some consider Google+ activity to be rather quiet compared to, say,
Facebook, the social network’s membership continues to steadily climb as Google
figures out new ways to entice members to join. For example, in order to create
a new Gmail account, you must also create a Google+ profile.
And what about your Facebook page? According to Google, Facebook and Twitter
results won’t appear because that would conflict with those websites’ terms of
service. However, Google claims they’d consider offering this information if
their competitors allowed it.
So what does this mean for website traffic? Even before SPYW, participating in
Google+ would have some positive impact on search results, but now it appears
that if you have no Google+ presence and your competition does, you might lose
existing search traffic going forward. Therefore, it may make sense to get in
early on this trend.
Source: Searchengineland.com, Jan. 10, 2012
Small firms working harder for fed contracts
The economic downturn has hit government spending as it has other areas of
the American economy. A new survey conducted among small business owners who are
active federal contractors shows that they are working harder for less return
than they were a year ago.
The report shows that the amount of time and money that active small business
contractors have invested in seeking federal contracting opportunities has
increased by 21% in the past year. Even as the average investment has risen,
bidding activity has declined by nearly half, both in prime and subcontracting
bidding activity. Further, the average success rates have declined as well,
indicating a more competitive environment.
So how can a small business increase the odds of getting contracts? Don’t give
up! Small contractors reported that they had to submit an average of 4.4 bids
before they won their first prime federal contract. Subsequent successes
typically come easier. Two-thirds have performed on more than one contract, and,
on average, it took them just under a year after their first procurement victory
to win their second contract.
Success rates fall sharply as a business surpasses bidding on six or more
contracts over a three-year period. So concentrate on just a few procurement
opportunities and avoid submitting more than two or three bids per year.
Source: OpenForum.com, Dec. 15, 2011
A good mobile site can boost in-store sales, too
If you’ve concluded that your company doesn’t need a mobile-friendly
website, you may be missing out on sales — and not just mobile sales. A new
survey by ForeSee shows that satisfied mobile shoppers report being 40% more
likely than dissatisfied mobile customers to consider the same company when
purchasing through other channels such as a traditional website or store (88%
vs. 63%).
Satisfied mobile customers, those with scores of 80 or higher on ForeSee’s
E-Retail Satisfaction Index, are also 54% more likely than their dissatisfied
counterparts (with scores of 69 or lower) to consider the company the next time
they are making a similar purchase (91% vs. 59%), and twice as likely to
purchase from the company’s mobile site in the future (84% vs. 42%).
Source: MarketingCharts.com, Jan. 13, 2012
Why guessing a task’s completion time is tricky
Do you often underestimate how long it will take to complete a lengthy
project? People estimate small tasks to take longer than they actually do, but
underestimate the time needed for larger tasks, leading to dangerous
overconfidence — a good reason to view projects as series of small steps. But
what happens when you focus on how much work will be completed in a fixed time
period — a minute, hour or a day?
Results of a series of studies published in Applied Cognitive Psychology
and titled “To read two pages, I need 5 minutes, but give me 5 minutes and I
will read four: how to change productivity estimates by inverting the question”
suggests that flipping your focus reverses the biases: people believe they will
be less productive within a long period of time than in a short period. To the
article’s authors, this simply demonstrates that we have trouble with magnitude,
dilating small units of time or work (“it’s not that small!”) and
compressing larger ones.
For example, breaking a software project down into a quick succession of
releases may encourage unrealistic estimates of just how much of the project
will get done in each release. Therefore, it’s valuable to also reverse your
thinking and focus on the sub-tasks involved, and sense-check whether their
durations really do fit your fixed deadline.
Source: BPS Occupational Digest, Jan. 9, 2012
- Initiate a positive
conversation with anyone by
using great opening questions.
In any turbulent time period
asking “How’s it going?” will
often bait a negative response,
such as “Just hanging in there”
or “Trying to survive.” Then the
conversation goes south,
focusing on lack, worry and
dread. Dale Carnegie trained his
YMCA students in the 1930s to
ignite positive conversations by
opening with “What’s the good
word?” It changes the
conversation, the mood and the
direction of the talk. You could
also ask people the following:
“What are you enthused about
these days?”, “What are you
working on these days?” or “Tell
me something interesting; I’m
dying to hear about something
new and cool.”
Source: sandersays.typepad.com
- Want a competitive
edge in hiring and keeping
employees? Consider
increasing your paid vacation
time. It’s a desirable benefit,
and compared with other
benefits, the cost should be
relatively minor.
Source: Supervision,
320 Valley St., Burlington, LA
52601
- Is your new service
or product offer falling flat?
You may have failed to consider
and counteract your indirect
competition. For example, a
stressed-out executive can
obtain relief from a yoga class
or massage instead of your
$5,000 retreat. They can also
choose to continue to suffer the
stress (which is cheaper than
any other option). To combat
indirect competitors, start by
listing all the needs satisfied
by your offering. Next, write
down all the ways, besides
buying from you or a direct
competitor, that customers can
meet those needs. Finally,
strongly and explicitly make the
case for why your offering more
effectively meets those needs
compared to the indirect
competition.
Source: www.yudkin.com
- Craft a pitch that
wows journalists. You
may have a great story idea, but
unless you adapt your pitch to
the needs of today’s journalist,
it’s going nowhere. First of
all, email your pitch (forget
the phone or fax), but don’t
send attachments. Grab attention
with a strong subject line
that’s clear about the topic of
the pitch and shows you
understand the audience the
journalist writes for. Once
opened, the most salient parts
of your pitch should be in the
very first sentence of your
message. Keep the pitch short —
no longer than three paragraphs.
Ideally, you should tie your
pitch to the news of the day, a
current trend or an interesting
news statistic. Be clear about
why the story would be of
interest to readers. Include
links to your website, a video,
fact sheet, recent study and so
on. It’s okay to send a
follow-up email or two. If they
don’t respond, assume they
aren’t interested and move on,
or risk being labeled a pest.
Source: www.marketingprofs.com
- Can’t find the right
contact person in a company?
Try looking at the job listings.
If there’s a listing that is in
the same department or is
aligned with what you offer,
companies almost always give a
point person to contact. What’s
more, when you know what type of
positions they are hiring for,
you can figure out what they’ve
got planned and what they need.
You can also learn a little
about a company’s language and
culture.
Source: www.wsj.com
- Pick an “always” to
stand out from the competition.
An always is something you will
do, without fail, no matter
what. For example, you could
start small and decide you will
always respond to calls or
emails within 30 minutes, follow
up the day after every sale or
suggest alternatives.
Alternatively, you could go
bigger and always deliver early,
charge the lowest prices or
maintain the most comprehensive
inventory. The always you choose
is up to you. Just make sure
customers will value and
appreciate the difference your
always creates. In time, you
will be known by your always —
and you’ll start to stand out.
Source: www.cbsnews.com
- Do your customers
think they’re invulnerable?
In some industries such as
insurance, health care and
fitness, a common problem is
that many people don’t realize
that a risk exists for them —
they think they’re invulnerable.
Research suggests that the key
to selling to this type of
customer is to point out the
risks not to them, but to
others. For example, selling a
car based on safety features
won’t work unless it is put in
the context of protecting family
members, particularly when
another driver causes an
accident. That approach
addresses invulnerability in two
ways — first, it’s more
believable to the customer that
a child could be injured than
himself, and second, it’s more
likely that someone else will
cause an accident than he will.
Source:
www.neurosciencemarketing.com
- If employees tune
you out when you give feedback,
gain their attention with a
role-reversal question. For
example, “If you were me, what
kind of feedback would you give
on your performance?”
Source: www.briefings.com
- Increase your
exposure by networking beyond
your bubble. We
instinctively seek out those who
share our interests, but by
doing so we limit the range of
situations and people we’re
exposed to. Diversify your
network and experiences with
these ideas: 1) Attend at least
one conference a year in a field
that you may have interest in,
but little experience. 2) Talk
to the loners. At social events,
don’t just spend time with your
friends and colleagues. Seek out
the people who don’t fit in
(hint: they look alone and
uncomfortable) and strike up a
conversation. 3) Find diversity
within. Reconnect with passions
that you may have ignored
because they didn’t fit into
your life. In doing so you’ll
encounter people far removed
from your daily experiences who
may provide you with new self
insight.
Source:
www.harvardbusinessreview.com
Business Intelligence Report
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Steve
McKee is president of
McKee Wallwork Cleveland
and author of
When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About
It.
Find him on Twitter and
LinkedIn.