|
header
How To Correct Common
Marketing Mistakes
by
Kevin Nunley
A well-tuned
marketing campaign is
a beautiful thing. Your
advertising not only connects with just the right
prospects, but
it seems everyone is talking about you, your product, or
service.
Sales come in at a nice pace. Profits mount as you
quietly
chuckle thinking how little you spent on marketing.
Suddenly,
moving your company forward doesn't seem hard at all.
Unfortunately, marketing rarely works that easily, at
least at
first. Rhonda, who is marketing director for a mid-sized
business-to-business company, purchased an expensive
series of
television ads to boost product awareness. "I
thought
getting
our brand in front of so many people would naturally
increase
sales, but it didn't happen," she laments.
Meanwhile, Ted, working hard to get a home-based business
opportunity started, sunk his entire three-month
marketing budget
into a sales letter to 1,000 prospects. Only a few
responded
leaving Ted wondering what he did wrong.
Most marketing gets held back by a few very common
mistakes.
Let's look at a few along with ways you can easily
correct them
to get your advertising back on track.
Mistake #1: Your marketing gets lost in the crowd. Each
of
us
gets bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every
day. From magazines, to radio ads, to a TV talking in the
background,
to the flier left on your front door, the daily ad
barrage
continues.
Prospects quickly learn to ignore marketing. After all,
most of
it has very little to do with their concerns. Prospects
only pay
attention to marketing that is radically different or
marketing
that speaks directly to their most immediate concerns.
Highly innovative marketing rarely works. It may be one
of the
most counterintuitive features of promotion. How many of
the
outrageous dot-com ads from the 1990s do you still
remember?
Instead, separate your ad from the pack by making it talk
directly to something the prospect really cares about.
It should
point out a problem your product or service can solve.
Make the language of your ad sound like the way customers
would
describe the problem, the solution, and the way they feel
after
the problem is solved. This is language that gets
attention.
Mistake #2: Marketing targets an audience that is
too broad.
Before you can address the specific concerns of a
prospect, you
have to narrow the groups of people your marketing is
reaching.
Ted's sales letter didn't work because the list of
addresses he
mailed to weren't people who had already shown an
interest in
starting a home-based business. Many were already owners
of
good-sized businesses. Others were managers in companies
with
little time or inclination to work from home.
Ted would do better to use a more tightly targeted list
of people
who had recently requested information on a home-based
business
or had tried one or more opportunities in recent years.
An ad in your big city newspaper will reach a great many
people,
but very few will be in the market to buy your
improvement for
offset printers. In this case, your ad would work much
better in
a trade magazine for printing companies.
TV and newspapers work very well to sell products used by
a
large, diverse mass of people. You can target TV and
newspapers
further by putting ads on specialized cable TV programs
or in
special neighborhood editions of newspapers. Likewise,
you can
get better targeting and lower rates by placing ads in
regional
editions of national magazines.
Mistake #3: Your ad
budget gets blown in a one-shot marketing
gamble. This is one of the most common and often
heart-breaking
problems. A new store will spend everything they have on
one
radio remote, full page newspaper ad, or direct mailer.
If the
first try doesn't work (and it often doesn't), there is
no money
left for a second or third try.
Which leads us to the next mistake.
Mistake #4:
Marketing isn't consistent. The old saying among
veteran marketers is the first ad never works. You get
consistent, long-term results by continuing your ad over
weeks
and months.
It may be true that familiarity breeds contempt, but not
in
marketing. Familiarity develops awareness and confidence
in
prospects so they buy.
There are endless examples of a small inexpensive ad that
appeared in the local Sunday paper every issue for years.
Sales
started slowly, then built to a constant roar.
I'll never forget the owners of an auto parts supplier
who
strongly believed if the ad didn't pull astounding
results
the first time, there was no use in continuing. They
bounced
from ads in one publication to ads in another with
little to
show for their effort.
Mistake #5:
Marketing fails to tie different media together.
Too many times the direct mail campaign a company does
has little
to do with the magazine ads they are running. Instead,
make your
ads in different media all relate to each other.
Take the audio from your TV commercial and adapt it for a
radio
spot. Use a still from the TV commercial in your
magazine and
newspaper ads. Take the still photo and some of the
verbiage
from your spot and use it in a direct mail campaign.
The continuity will increase your chances of breaking
through the
marketing clutter to really reach prospects.
Keep in mind different media work in different ways,
accomplishing some things better than others. Television
SHOWS
how your product or service works. Radio helps people
know the
FEELING of using your product. Newspapers and magazines
are good
at EXPLAINING how things work. Direct mail utilizes the
power of
the letter to talk to your prospects in a very personal
one-on-
one way.
Mistake #6: Finally,
don't believe
the hype that the Internet is
somehow dead or dying. USA Today recently reported the
number
of people using the Web has doubled since the
Internet Boom in 1998.
Huge numbers of consumers and businesses worldwide now
understand the Web is a wonderful place to find a large
variety, get things done fast, and uncover a lower price.
Use your web site to give visitors all the information
they need
to understand and buy your product or service. Have your
TV
spots, radio commercials, print ads, and sales letters
all send
people to your web site where they can spend as much time
as
they
need perusing your in-depth material.
Marketing is one of those aspects of life where the
tried-and-
true often works best. Use these proven solutions to
common
marketing mistakes to insure your advertising and
promotion
efforts bring the results you expect.
Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice, copy writing, and
promotion packages. See his 10,000 marketing ideas at
http://DrNunley.com
Reach Kevin at
mailto:kevin@drnunley.com
or
801-328-9006.
How To Correct Common Marketing Mistakes
by Kevin Nunley
DrNunley.com
|
