Zip Media Company 4 Additional Common Marketing Mistakes

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Part 2 of common marketing mistakes.
Numerous business conversations have exposed common mistakes made with marketing. My goal is to explain these mistakes so you can change your thinking about marketing since it’s crucial to any business.

Read 5 Common Marketing Mistakes

1. We only need a marketing professional for a while, and then you can take over the marketing.

Not really, the opposite is true. If the relationship works well and both the business and the marketing professional are making money the last thing a business owner should do is take over the marketing again.

When an owner calls in a professional they were struggling with marketing, why go back to the struggle? Besides working with a marketing professional for a year does not make you a marketing expert.

There is also a difference between knowing what to do for marketing and then implementing the program. Marketing professionals don’t give up all their secrets.

2. It’s not important to review past marketing efforts.

Reviewing past marketing is essential. Why?

A business can’t move forward unless it knows what’s happened in the past. Reviewing the effective and non-effective marketing helps a company make better decisions about where to start, what should continue, and what can be tweaked to be more effective.

If the marketing efforts were not successful, but maybe they should have been, exploring why and making minor changes, saves time and money. Often a simple change generates success.

Keeping detailed records of marketing efforts from the beginning also indicates progress and where to make future improvements.

3. Everyone should be the target of your marketing.

Impossible and foolish. You are not everything to everyone. The buzz phrase in marketing is “the riches are in the niches.”

Everyone is too general to make a serious impact. It’s a lot like throwing darts outside a bar, in a field, no dart board in sight and no weight to the darts. Stuff is flying everywhere, never landing where you want.

There is no point to that kind of marketing, you will not achieve desired results, and will work very hard Not to make it happen. The myth of doing every bit of social media marketing at once is similar to this concept. Too much- little impact.

Focus your attention on exactly who your product or service can help. Keep in mind people are looking for solutions to problems. Start small, and if you are on target, then you can expand if your product can help more people.

Note: if you have a chance read The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. He literally explains that if you have a product that doesn’t do anything for anybody ditch it and start over. Its an easy read with a fantastic change in perspective about marketing.

Note: When working with clients I make sure we break down the pool of potential clients first. From there we can create marketing that speaks to directly to that audience. We can also find them online and focus our attention on them. It’s more intricate than that, but that’s the idea.

Clients who have an established business and want to increase revenue will have a much different marketing strategy than a new company.

An established business we review their current clients and success and enhance it to get more of those clients or tap into another market.

New businesses may have to do a lot more testing to find the first successes, but there still needs to be a niche to start. Marketing will always change, so it’s time to start and tweak as you go.

That was a simple explanation of how I handle the process. If you have questions email us

4. Marketing is marketing and sales is sales.

We could debate all week about the differences between marketing and sales and how they are separate. However, what a business owner needs to know is marketing and sales an integral part of any business success.

I believe you cannot have one without the other and marketing’s most significant focus should be on sales or what’s the point?

Small businesses don’t have the luxury to separate the two; larger business could- but then again what’s the point of marketing? These two need to work together. I value the sales department because it’s a tough job and if marketing helps make it easier and increases more frequent sales- bam! We now have a working and successful relationship.