The Three Worst Marketing
Mistakes You Can Make
Marketing is what we do
that puts us in a position to make a sale. Good marketing makes
selling easier. Bad marketing may make selling impossible.
We market to strangers so
some of them will raise their hand with at least potential
interest in what we have on offer.
We market to our clients and
customers in order to move them up to the next level of products
or services.
Most of us put a lot of
time, money, and
effort into marketing. For must of us it is the key activity we
use to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.
But when we don't deliver on
the promises we make in our marketing we unleash the deadly 3/33
viruses on ourselves.
The 3/33 virus will destroy
the marketing we have done in the past and it will make it very
difficult to successfully market - at least to some prospects -
in the future. And for the most part the 3/33 virus is a
do-it-to-yourself process.
The 3/33 virus is word of
mouth marketing on steroids - in reverse. Here's how it works.
When you fulfill a promise,
deliver excellent service, come in under budget, and save your
customer more money than you said you would - they might tell 3
people. And that usually is because you asked them for
referrals.
But if you screw up, don't do
what you said you would do, or fail to deliver in any way - in
your customer's mind - they will tell at least 33 people. This
can be disaster.
You know I am speaking the
truth. Remember the last time you got poor service in a
restaurant and how many people you went out of your way to tell
about it?
Here are three ways to
guarantee that all
the marketing you've done will backfire on you.
Don't Do What You Said
You'd Do
In 2006 I met the author of a
marketing book at the Search Engine Strategies event in New York
City. I had been receiving his email newsletter and had heard a
few things about the book. A table where he could autograph
books had been set up for him at the Search Engine Strategies
meeting. When there was no one around I approached him and found
him to be a very insightful person, someone whose book would
probably be of value to our readers.
He offered to send me a
review copy and I thanked him. After the event I emailed him a
note with my mailing address. I never received the book. I
received several emails to the address I had given him, but they
were solicitations sent to everyone he'd come across at the
search engine event.
I don't know if he never
intended to follow up with his promise, or if he turned it over
to someone else, or what. The bottom line is that I will never
have anything positive to say about him, his organization, or
his book. That can't be what this marketer had in mind when he
went to the time, trouble, and energy to come to New York.
Disappear With Your
Customer's Money
The Internet makes it
possible to hire people you will never see to do something you
can not do and really have no way of knowing it will work until
it's too late, and pay them via your PayPal account before
they've even begun to do the work.
I have done this several
times without incident. Recently however I hired someone, on the
strength of another person's recommendation, who kept my money
and disappeared. He had promised to do the work within 48 hours
of receiving my payment. But instead I heard nothing from him
for six weeks, at which point he contacted me to see if there
was some way to make up for his failure to follow through.
I was astounded,
but since I'd already paid him I asked him to do something that
was worth less than half of what he'd already been paid. Hey, we
all deserve a second chance. What happened? Nothing, I never
heard from him again.
It's hard to say if I would
have ever needed his services in the future anyway - so it was
just a tedious time consuming event for me, getting someone else
to do the job and so forth. But what did it do to the
relationship I had had with the person who recommended him?
This was someone I trusted.
Now I have to think twice about anything he has to sell me. And
I am not going to tell my friends to do business with him in the
future. Why would I take the chance he will recommend something
or someone whose lack of performance comes back to bite me?
Embarrass Your Boss
Everybody's got to serve
somebody was a line in one of Bob Dylan's songs. So no matter
who you are or the position you have in your outfit - you do
have a boss, maybe many of them.
Prior to events where I am
registered as part of the media horde, I receive a stream of
emails from companies that are making presentations or have
exhibits there. A week before the 2007 Search Engine Strategies
meeting in New York I received an interview request from the PR
firm representing an organization I wanted to learn more about.
Actually I received three
emails from them, each with open time slots, so I could chose
one of the remaining times for the interview.
This is the way it's
always done. By the
time I get to the site I have several one on one interviews set
up with people whose message, I think, will be of value to our
readers. So I emailed my choice of day and time, from one of the
remaining time slots.
In this case however, the PR
person never go back to me. How was that possible, that was his
job?
I was curious about the lack
of follow up, from a PR person no less, so I printed out the
email I'd sent and took it along with me to the meeting.
On the second day
of the search engine conference I scoured the exhibit halls and
eventually found the person I had wanted to interview. I still
wanted to talk with him if we could work out the time.
You can imagine his response
to my story and the copy of my email when I presented it to him.
You can also guess the fate
of the PR firm who had mishandled their account. It seems I was
not the only person affected by this - one of whom was an
industry leader the boss really wanted to meet.
So, who's your boss? Whose
opinions are important to you? Who do you serve? Are you doing
everything you can and more to make sure you aren't
disappointing or embarrassing them?
How can you be sure to
avoid the three worst
marketing mistakes? Only make promises you can keep, and keep
the ones you make. It's as simple as that.
________________________________
About the Author:
If you want to leverage what you are
already doing right visit the
21st Century Peer Groups for Wayne Messick's report based on
his experience as a business consultant who offers a wealth of
free information at
http://www.iBizResources.com.
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