How,Correct,Common,Marketing,M marketing How To Correct Common Marketing Mistakes

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A well-tuned marketing campaign is a beautiful thing. Youradvertising not only connects with just the right prospects, butit seems everyone is talking about you, your product, or service.Sales come in at a nice pace. Profits mount as you quietlychuckle thinking how little you spent on marketing. Suddenly,moving your company forward doesn't seem hard at all.Unfortunately, marketing rarely works that easily, at least atfirst. Rhonda, who is marketing director for a mid-sizedbusiness-to-business company, purchased an expensive series oftelevision ads to boost product awareness. "I thought gettingour brand in front of so many people would naturally increasesales, but it didn't happen," she laments.Meanwhile, Ted, working hard to get a home-based businessopportunity started, sunk his entire three-month marketing budgetinto a sales letter to 1,000 prospects. Only a few respondedleaving Ted wondering what he did wrong.Most marketing gets held back by a few very common mistakes.Let's look at a few along with ways you can easily correct themto get your advertising back on track.Mistake #1: Your marketing gets lost in the crowd. Each of usgets bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every day.>From magazines, to radio ads, to a TV talking in the background,to the flier left on your front door, the daily ad barragecontinues.Prospects quickly learn to ignore marketing. After all, most ofit has very little to do with their concerns. Prospects only payattention to marketing that is radically different or marketingthat speaks directly to their most immediate concerns.Highly innovative marketing rarely works. It may be one of themost counterintuitive features of promotion. How many of theoutrageous dot-com ads from the 1990s do you still remember?Instead, separate your ad from the pack by making it talkdirectly to something the prospect really cares about. It shouldpoint out a problem your product or service can solve.Make the language of your ad sound like the way customers woulddescribe the problem, the solution, and the way they feel afterthe problem is solved. This is language that gets attention.Mistake #2: Marketing targets an audience that is too broad.Before you can address the specific concerns of a prospect, youhave to narrow the groups of people your marketing is reaching.Ted's sales letter didn't work because the list of addresses hemailed to weren't people who had already shown an interest instarting a home-based business. Many were already owners ofgood-sized businesses. Others were managers in companies withlittle time or inclination to work from home.Ted would do better to use a more tightly targeted list of peoplewho had recently requested information on a home-based businessor had tried one or more opportunities in recent years.An ad in your big city newspaper will reach a great many people,but very few will be in the market to buy your improvement foroffset printers. In this case, your ad would work much better ina trade magazine for printing companies.TV and newspapers work very well to sell products used by alarge, diverse mass of people. You can target TV and newspapersfurther by putting ads on specialized cable TV programs or inspecial neighborhood editions of newspapers. Likewise, you canget better targeting and lower rates by placing ads in regionaleditions of national magazines.Mistake #3: Your ad budget gets blown in a one-shot marketinggamble. This is one of the most common and often heart-breakingproblems. A new store will spend everything they have on oneradio remote, full page newspaper ad, or direct mailer. If thefirst try doesn't work (and it often doesn't), there is no moneyleft for a second or third try.Which leads us to the next mistake.Mistake #4: Marketing isn't consistent. The old saying amongveteran marketers is the first ad never works. You getconsistent, long-term results by continuing your ad over weeksand months.It may be true that familiarity breeds contempt, but not inmarketing. Familiarity develops awareness and confidence inprospects so they buy.There are endless examples of a small inexpensive ad thatappeared in the local Sunday paper every issue for years. Salesstarted slowly, then built to a constant roar.I'll never forget the owners of an auto parts supplier whostrongly believed if the ad didn't pull astounding resultsthe first time, there was no use in continuing. They bouncedfrom ads in one publication to ads in another with little toshow for their effort.Mistake #5: Marketing fails to tie different media together.Too many times the direct mail campaign a company does has littleto do with the magazine ads they are running. Instead, make yourads in different media all relate to each other.Take the audio from your TV commercial and adapt it for a radiospot. Use a still from the TV commercial in your magazine andnewspaper ads. Take the still photo and some of the verbiagefrom your spot and use it in a direct mail campaign.The continuity will increase your chances of breaking through themarketing clutter to really reach prospects.Keep in mind different media work in different ways,accomplishing some things better than others. Television SHOWShow your product or service works. Radio helps people know theFEELING of using your product. Newspapers and magazines are goodat EXPLAINING how things work. Direct mail utilizes the power ofthe letter to talk to your prospects in a very personal one-on-one way.Mistake #6: Finally, don't belive the hype that the Internet issomehow dead or dying. USA Today recently reported the number ofpeople using the Web has doubled since the Internet Boom in1998.Huge numbers of consumers and businesses worldwide now understandthe Web is a wonderful place to find a large variety, get thingsdone fast, and uncover a lower price.Use your web site to give visitors all the information they needto understand and buy your product or service. Have your TVspots, radio commercials, print ads, and sales letters all sendpeople to your web site where they can spend as much time as theyneed perusing your in-depth material.Marketing is one of those aspects of life where the tried-and-true often works best. Use these proven solutions to commonmarketing mistakes to insure your advertising and promotionefforts bring the results you expect. Article Tags: Different Media, Direct Mail