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.
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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 for sure 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 but
profitable, marketing methods.
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
to Part 2..
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