The Mistakes of Marketing

Written by businessideas.info

When getting into marketing, you will naturally hear a mix of success and failure stories.  You may also have read or heard how successful people got where they are, but you never hear much about how people fail.  It is important to know how failures occur so you can avoid the mistakes of those people.  Take the mistakes of others as gifts; they have shown you what not to do.  You may want to focus only on what makes you successful, but if you only do that, you may inadvertently do something wrong that could crush you.  So take advantage of the knowledge that is being presented, it may just save your business.

A fatal mistake that many businesses make is targeting too broad of a market.  The world of business has become extremely competitive, and if you do not focus on one specific niche, you are going to be outmarketed by bigger companies.  Remember, if you are a small business, your marketing budget is relatively low (at least, comparatively), and even semi-large companies will blow you out of the water.  The best way to succeed is to concentrate on a subniche of a larger niche.  For example, instead of selling all kinds of sporting equipment, sell only baseball equipment.  This allows you to allocate all marketing funds to promoting that one thing, instead of having to split up your money to promote a wide array of products. 

Many businesses believe that if they advertise to a wide audience, they will get a huge response.  This is not the case.  In fact, when you advertise, only 1-3% of your prospects will have an interest in your product at the time, and in some cases, nobody will.  Also, in the 1-3% of people who are interested, they still might not buy from you because they are not familiar with your brand.  That is why it is critical to use consistent advertising; even though you are reaching the same people over and over again, eventually, more and more of those people will become customers. 

 Over time (whether it be weeks, months, or even years), different prospects will fill the 1-3% of potential customers, and, as long as you are advertising frequently, more of that small percentage will buy because they are familiar with you.  If you do not advertise consistently, you cannot build this brand awareness or effectively target the interested market.  Remember, frequency is more important than reach.  

The only way for a business to stay alive is to sell products, and if you do not describe your product correctly, it does not matter how many people you attract.  Consumers want to know how products will better their lives, and not about all the interesting features.  For example, if you are selling a television, don't just say that is has great resolution and end there.  State that because of the resolution, your picture is much clearer and brighter, and so you will enjoy TV much more than you did before.  You should elaborate further, but that is the basic idea.  The better you present the benefits of products to your consumers, the more response you will see.