I’ve been helping businesses, associations and government agencies develop marketing strategies for over 20 years.
Sometimes, I’m asked to develop them from scratch. More often, I’m called in because ‘the marketing isn’t working’.
Well, marketing works. So where are these businesses going wrong? Here are 5 common mistakes I see:
- Treating advertising as the only part of marketing.
You’d be shocked at how many millions of dollars are thrown down the drain by companies blazing money on advertising with no coherent marketing plan to back it up.
Simply spending money on media to communicate an untested message to a broad market is a recipe for disaster. If you are ‘lucky’ enough, you’ll spend enough money in a mainstream media channel and you’ll move the dial slightly on sales. More likely, you’ll communicate a message your customers don’t find meaningful, to people who have no interest in your product or service.
That’s not us, I hear you say, we know where our market is and what they want to hear….
2. No research on the end users.
Literally the worst people to ask about the customers of the business are the people that work in it. They are far too close to the operation and have long held opinions shaped by interactions with a small number of customers.
But most businesses insist they know all about their customers? Sure, you are a useful source of information but unless you are a monopoly conducting 100% of the transactions you can’t speak for the market. And even then, you’ll only understand your end of the transaction not the customer end.
A good marketing plan starts with researching the end user / customer and then maps the market from there. Can’t afford it? I don’t believe you. I’ve never worked for an organization where we couldn’t base a marketing plan from primary or secondary data.
Secondary data is free, most businesses have some sort of a database, and you can get useful primary data from as little as $2500. There is no excuse.
3. Going after everything.
Not even the largest companies in the world, with the largest marketing budgets go after everything. You can’t afford it and it won’t work.
Identify the target segment and marketing problem you need to address. Spend your money to solve that problem. You can prioritise the marketing problem based on the expected ROI from solving it; how quickly you can solve the problem; and how much it will cost you to solve the problem.
I have a client with a market segment it has a huge conversion success rate from. The problem is that 70% of that target market haven’t heard of my client. Simple stuff with easy measurables (brand awareness) to report on. Market conditions remaining equal, we move brand awareness, and we grow sales.
4. Not being meaningful to your customer.
You can spend a lot of money on marketing and a lot of people can know you, but does that mean anything? Brand awareness is great but how do you harness it?
Being meaningful requires you to identify a factor that is important to your customer, that you can absolutely deliver on and ideally is different to your competition.
Now you have a proposition to talk to the market about. Something that will differentiate you from the competition and something that your customers want to hear about.
I find it incredible how many businesses live tactically day by day.
5. Not giving marketing an input into product, pricing, and distribution.
Let’s be clear, product, pricing and distribution should be owned by the marketing function. They are marketing tactics. Many businesses don’t give marketing any input into these tactics, let alone the ownership of them. Businesses with no inherent marketing function fulfill these practices in other ways.
Businesses with marketing functions that don’t get involved in them are missing 75% of marketing tactics, so it’s hard to make your marketing work!
Common mistakes include cost plus pricing, leaving huge margins on the table with supply not market led pricing decisions; failing to adequately describe and position business products and services correctly so chunks of the market literally don’t know the product is relevant to them; and making distribution decisions that don’t allow you to maximise the value of the target segments you have identified.
Unsure if your marketing is working? Think your marketing could do better. Market Strategy offers a free marketing strategy appraisal. If we think we can help, we’ll let you know how.
Contact us for more details.