Top Three Common Marketing Mistakes
As me myself coming from the agency background, I am blessed to have the chance to work with some of the most renowned brands in the world, fastest growing startup or some SME with a very limited marketing budget.With this kind of exposure, it’s not hard for me to witness some of the most common mistakes (sometimes me myself included) made by the marketers across the different industry.
Here are the top three mistakes that I think most marketers make.
1. They focus on the number ONLY
As we all now living in the digital age, its no surprise that many businesses have changed their marketing focus online, the good thing with marketing online is that we can measure ROI/metrics more precisely and able to somehow “justify our marketing dollar”.
The problem?Also because we measure the ROI ONLY.
When the company gives marketers a target to hit it means fellow marketers have to find a way to point their arrow directly at the bullseye (certain ROI) and sometimes neglecting the big picture.
What about branding?
What about long-time value?
Most of the time no shit is given, so long that we can hit the target, business is good, everything business as usual.
So here we are, throwing promotion around & look at the video views that we got in advertised video (Facebook nowadays count 3 sec video view as 1 view, so what if I just scroll over my newsfeed try to find some dog meme and my autoplay is on?) and pat our own shoulder think that we did a good job.Do you see brand like Apple, LV, Gucci, cut their storewide product price by 30%?
No, but that’s what most brand doing nowadays to boost their sales (KPI) in order to achieve their target.The bottom-line? If you need to rely on promotion to get your product sell, your business won’t last for long.
2. Not Looking At The Big Picture
Most of the organization these days work separately across different department & this is a big concern when it comes the marketing department, the department that burns most of the money in advertising/promotion.
Let say you are throwing out a promotion and attracted a large crowd that either enquires about the product or go to the offline store to purchase the product when you see the number of leads you got you think “BAM! Great marketing, my job is done here, rubbing my hand waiting for my fat-ass bonus this year!”.
Have you thought about your customer service team’s capacity?
Are they able to handle this large amount of inquiries?
Are they professional enough to give a different solution to different customers’ need?
Have you thought about the staff in the offline store?
Are they able to handle the amount of potential customer at the same time?
Chances are, the customer service/staff won’t be able to handle that much of inquiries at the same time and cause some potential customers to wait for ages without their question or needs be answered.
What will happen?F
ew unhappy customers go to your Facebook page leave a bad comment, rate 1 star on your social page, tell their acquaintances about this poor impression, never visit your store again in the future..the snowball & negative word-of-mouth effect will bring a huge negative impact on the business because of the “marketing effort”.
What you think helping your business eventually tear your business down.
So when it comes to marketing planning, most of the time it requires someone who understands the big picture, do some careful planning to make sure the marketing effort take care of every aspect of the business rather than just “Slam promotion, I did my job, Close case.
3. Great Marketing Can’t Save Shit Product
There are many of the products on the market is doom to fail, 90% of the startup fails, and there is a common saying of most businesses fail within the first 5 years. The main reason? From what I think, it starts with the product.
Let say now you have this “great idea” of coming out a new smartphone that competes with Samsung, Apple, Huawei & so many other more brands.
How are you plan to compete against them?
You going to offer bigger screen?
Samsung did that
You going to offer a better camera?
Huawei did that
You going to offer a better design?
Apple did that
So what are you going to offer? what are you going to shout in your marketing materials? Are you going to offer a combination of all of the above?
All of the other brands said they did that
Let’s admit it, we are not living in 80’s anymore. It’s not gonna and never going to be like our granny’s era again where you spend enough on TV advertising, banner, billboard, and your product will miraculously sell like a hot cake.
All information and comparison information about the different product is just 1 Google search away.
You have to admit that, some product is just too shit to sell. No matter how much you spend on advertising, the business won’t last because consumers nowadays are getting smarter & more choices on the tip of their finger because your product/pricing has nothing to compete against the other brands.
To counter this, all of the product creation before push into the market should involve a marketing person with enough research & beta product to at least fit some of the consumers’ need before final launching & spend tons of marketing dollar on it.
Even most product did the above still end up reaching a dead end, so what makes you think the product market fit don’t matter?
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Thanks for reading.
