5 Really Dumb Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Everyone knows that to run good business requires skills and knowledge. No one can argue with the trickiness of business and sometimes handling what seems to be easy and simple can backfire. One of the trickiest parts is marketing and it is indeed crucial to master. Why? Because no matter how good the products are, without good marketing there is only little chance that people will take notice and let alone, buy those quality goods. However, there are some silly marketing mistakes that enterprises are prone to do, which may result in sending potential customers away.

1. Marketing without defined metrics

How do you measure success if you don’t even know what success means? How can a marketer possibly manage P&L and make sound decisions without knowing their cost per lead (CPL) or cost per acquisition (CPA)? These metrics are not perfect, but provide a reliable sense of whether your campaign is stagnant, improving, or worsening.

Keep track of these numbers, and include them in your kickoff meetings and project briefs. It helps to focus your marketing strategy.

2. Focusing on only one type of channel or method

Talking about startup companies, it can be understood that they may lack the experiences and end up using only one or two methods for their marketing. Although those methods seem to work well at first, for long term, there should be more people to reach. Nowadays, reaching out to potential buyers will involve countless marketing methods, what with the booming era of social media and such driving force to share.

While there is nothing wrong with using the old techniques like putting your products on the shelves of the retail shops around the country and handing out brochures and samples to try in crowded places, doing the modern versions of marketing campaigns such as hiring social media influencers to promote your products is likely to boost your sales and may even give the best possible results. In fact, before Sol Republic is recognized as an audio giant like it is today, it collaborated with more than thirty main ambassadors publicizing the audio brand for around two years to get some significant marketing boost.

3. Not understanding your market and buyers.

Now that relying solely on one marketing method has been highlighted as a serious mistake, it is time to filter and decide the media. Applying the techniques on a wrong media will be such a waste. Imagine what comes to your mind when you see a language institution advertisement on a cooking magazine or blog. Not only does it encourage you to think of the institution as a non-sensible organization, but it also cannot catch the right kind of core target market. How will inviting people with passion for food to come and join a language class be a successful marketing campaign? Understand your target’s needs, what makes them tick and the pressures they are under.

4. No marketing team

Coming up with the ideas of marketing techniques and sorting out the media to promote ads need a lot of effort, time and money. Good company owners should realize that even to handle the two job duties mentioned earlier is not supposed to be a one-man show. That is why not having a marketing team supporting the marketing manager or director is another mistake to avoid. Companies, especially startups, may want to skimp the capital to keep their finances healthy, but here is the thing to consider: is paying one man to brainstorm marketing ideas, execute those ideas, handle media coverage and attend meetings with potential customers money well-spent? The work will not be effective (no matter how dedicated) simply because there are too many things to juggle.

5. Having a poor marketing strategy

Should you be lucky enough to already have a marketing team, you may want to avoid not analyzing if your marketing strategy has been effective. For example, you can question the effectiveness of the long commonly shared strategy of e-mailing newsletters to database. As a matter of fact, adding people to the companies’ mailing lists without having their consent and forcing them to receive e-mails or other notifications they barely care about are by far the most common silliness which is done by both startup and established business ventures. These companies seem to assume that once you buy their products or simply leave your name cards in one of the companies’ public charity events, you will be more than thrilled to find out more about their best-selling products, promo prices, etc.

To make this case even sillier, the unsubcribing process has not been made simple. By reflecting the strategy, you will know better than to continue irritating (potential) customers and come up with ideas to make the strategy work more effectively. The simplest way to do to cover the flawed strategy is to explain the benefits of getting the newsletters to both potential and existing customers and at the same time give them options whether to take or decline the offered benefits. It will also be better if you can provide one single click to both subscribe and unsubscribe. In that way, your company’s mailing list is effectively addressed and gives greater chance of marketing success.

Conclusion

To conclude, the combination of several marketing methods on the right media, having a marketing team, analyzing and improving the marketing strategies that have been implemented are likely to get rid of the possible marketing silliness.