5 Deadly Sins of Marketing
Marketing is arguably one of the most important drivers of sales for any business. However, marketing can also lead to high expenses and a low Return on Investment (ROI), when certain essential steps are not put in place. Before we delve fully into it, the various ethics and the minimum decorum that has to compulsorily be conducted. Doing otherwise would hurl all your efforts in the drain, no matter what marketing strategy you actualize. Here is a list of “5 Deadly Sins of Marketing” that your business should stay away from:
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Making Marketing Decisions Just Based Of Your Gut:
You may have a lucky bone, and your gut may always be right but when it comes to marketing and spending valuable business dollars, it is more effective to trust your data. Many businesses make marketing decisions without first understanding their customers needs, evaluating current results from other marketing efforts, analyzing interaction on websites etc. This is not to say that all marketing campaigns that are run based on intuition will fail. As a matter of fact, you should be experimenting with your marketing creatively while using your data to empower your business.
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Doing Something Just Because Everyone Because everyone is doing it:
Although it’s important to keep up with the times, it’s also essential to understand your unique business proposition in every given scenario. If there are many businesses that have Instagram accounts for instance, it’s ok not to use Instagram if that’s not where you find most of your target audience. Compete in the right space, at the right time with a clear goal in mind.
Related: How To Social Media Piggy Ride: Leveraging Existing Social Media Conversations
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Forgetting to Set Appropriate Marketing Campaign Goals:
I can’t begin to count the number of times that I’ve talked to clients who said “Hey, I need someone to help me with my digital marketing” then I asked the simple question; “what are long term and short term goals?” Then all of sudden, they seem unsure of what they are trying to achieve. Yes, of course, the general goal for every business is to make a sale of some sort. Nonetheless, if you don’t have short and long-term milestones that can help you measure your progress sometimes you end up having a big gap between the end goal and the journey to get to the end. Always define your goals before every email, social media or website optimization campaign.
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Not Measuring, Tweaking and Doing it Again:
In the past, many marketers had to rely on traditional marketing methods that were difficult to measure and/or quantify. While Putting a Commercial on TV, having a billboard or radio ad, maybe an effective form of marketing, it becomes hard to tell where sales are coming from and which mediums need to be concentrated on. In today’s technologically advanced world online marketing makes it easy to measure what is happening as it happens. Even though this may be the case, marketing analysis may sometimes get pushed to bottom of the list when it comes to priorities. The value in spending time on executing a marketing project or campaign without taking the time to make it better continuously is minimal.
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Thinking that Social Media Marketing is a “Waste” of Time:
I believe that most businesses that are not already involved in social media are slowly shying away from the idea of the not trying it out. On the other hand, there are still some businesses that still don’t use social media as a marketing channel. According to a recent social media research by Vision Critical, about 41% of respondents practice “reverse show rooming”—browsing online and then purchasing in stores. And if not anything at all many customers look out for social media profiles of brands to determine legitimacy and establish trust. So if you don’t get with the program you are doing your business more harm than good.
Instilling the best practices for marketing all the time can be a difficult task to achieve. If you have to cut corners, make sure that it’s not affecting your bottom line.
