Play Wiser: Are You Making These Marketing Mistakes?

| December 3, 2015

Play Wiser: Are You Making These Marketing Mistakes?

Marketing is an essential aspect of business, not matter what kind of business you run. Whether you promote a product, a service, or the entire company, you need a sound marketing strategy to help you. Marketing can also be harmful to your business if it’s not handled carefully. That’s usually why business owners leave marketing in the hands of marketing professionals while they focus on other aspects of their business. Nevertheless, you need to know the common marketing mistakes that can land your company in hot water. Here are some of them listed below.

Marketing Mistake 1: Not Getting the Right Data

This is one of the most common mistakes in marketing. Sometimes, marketers just don’t research the demographic, the competition, the industry, etc, carefully enough. This causes problems and marketing gaffes that can have negative consequences. Proper research is absolutely vital before you get your idea out there.

For example, a couple of years ago, a newly launched smart phone company declared that it would sell its products on a priority basis to women. Needless to say, the response was bad, even from women.

Better research would’ve told them that their target demographic, that is the women, disliked everything that smacked of sexism, even if it was in their favour. From this example, it’s pretty clear that good research is vital and bad information can damage a company’s reputation.

Marketing Mistake 2: Not Delivering on a Promise

That is, don’t promise things you can’t deliver. This is another common marketing mistake that companies are liable to make. For example, it’s very easy to promise that you’ll fix a problem in 24 hours, every time. However, if you don’t follow through, your reputation will suffer. It’s better to not make that promise in the first place.

When you make promises and don’t live up to them, you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s especially true if you have attracted customers based on that promise. If you want to make a promise, make sure that it’s feasible in as many situations as possible. Simply marking that promise with an asterisk won’t do. The customers would see it and immediately dismiss your promise.

Marketing Mistake 3: Not being Consistent

It’s vital to be consistent throughout the marketing platform but marketers have a tendency to lose sight of this. You might send out emails to the clients with links that are no longer valid, offer coupons on your website that don’t work, or have broken links in your content that are supposed to lead to expanded content. These things affect the user experience of the customers and can be big marketing problems.

To avoid this, you need to keep an eye on your marketing modes. It’s a great idea to go through the customer experience of your website and promotional materials like emails and content. This would help you spot problems and fix them before they come to customers’ attention.

These are some of the major mistakes in marketing and are often repeated by marketers. You need to be vigilant and keep an eye on your marketing campaigns. That would help avoid negative feedback from customers.