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Hub You - 11 MONSTROUS Small Business Marketing Mistakes and How To Avoid Them
If I only had enough time or energy to dispel the latest and greatest myths to pop-up in the sales game!I just happened upon another canard: If your prospect is well qualified, you can be an utter idiot at selling and still make a living.I have a dog in my yard, a Bearded Collie to be exact, who gets very hungry and if I starve him long enough I think he’ll eat shoe leather.It’s obvious that if someone has a strong enough or urgent enough need, he’ll sell himself.We call those prospects “walk-ins.” They, effectively speaking, come to you.If you’re in a maturing or competitive business, there aren’t that many “lay downs,” to find.Anyway, this bit of errant wisdom is just another addition to the burgeoning literature of QUACK SALES PRACTICES, or shall I say, malpractices. Espousers of this drivel should be sued for malpractice!We can add to this list one of my distinguished professors, someone who is the most quoted sage in management literature, the late Peter F. Drucker. He proclaimed:“If you do a good enough job of marketing, selling becomes unnecessary.”This is simply a more intelligent, but also wrong way of saying sell only to the qualified, to the ravenously hungry, to prospects that will close themselves.Baloney!Drucker got many things right, but this piece of bull was WAY off the mark.Don’t buy
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we ar
Maneuverability and safety should be of utmost consideration when towing any trailer or non powered vehicle. Whether you choose a fixed hitch or one that pivots to increase increase or unloading material, special care must be taken to ensure the trailer is attached securely and safely to the vehicle that is towing it. All utility trailers should be attached by a backup security chain in case the hitch and or ball fail to hold the trailer.Most aluminum utility trailers have a floating axle construction to allow adjustments to various load requirements. A few come in single axle for smaller, shorter trips, but for longer hauls and larger loads tandem axles offer greater security and ease of towing.Some other safety features include heavy-duty spring suspension, adequate tires engineered to hold the manufacturers suggested weight requirements and side and rear LED trailer light mechanisms that can be wired to the towing vehicle. An aluminum utility trailer must also be equipped with a secure bumper, reliable tow bar and larger trailers must have a reliable braking system.A utility trailer that is welded together far surpasses one that is designed to stay together with bolts. The constant jarring a aluminum utility trailer receives during transport could easily loosen bolted parts, thus making the vehicle unstable and a safety risk; a aluminum utility trailer that i
MONSTROUS Marketing Mistake Number 1: Sinking a Fortune Into an Unproven Product
Is your business idea built on market research or a hunch?
Entrepreneurs often fall in love with their products or services before they determine if there's a real market, and they throw fistfuls of money into the venture. If you, your spouse, your uncle, and your neighbor think you've got a winning idea, that's simply not enough qualified input to run to the bank and drain your savings account!
Avoid this mistake by:
- Conducting your detective work (research).
- Testing your business idea with the real marketplace.
Do you think you have a product or service that will practically sell itself?
Trust me - you don't.
There is a misconception among small business owners that, with the right product or service, your customers will simply "find" you when you open your doors for business. Whether you have a physical storefront on a corner lot in the busiest part of downtown, or a graphically pleasing online storefront offering easy access to your hot products and services, your customers will not find you if you do not market to them.
The day you open for business is the day you put on your "marketer's hat" and never take it off. You must consistently move product, or schedule service time.
To stay in business you must profit.
To profit you must sell.
To sell you must market.
The good news is that, with a marketing strategy, you take the control out of your potential customers' hands and put it into your own. If you have a product that will "practically sell itself," then your marketing job will be easy. Just remember that the job must still be done.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Defining your niche market and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that differentiates you from your competition.
- Developing a marketing action plan and strategy to reach your niche market with your USP message.
Marketing is an age-old practice with some very basic principles. Yet, I'm sure you've read many marketing information products that stress the importance of being innovative and creative with your marketing efforts. It's easy to get caught up in the innovation process and forget that the REAL focus should be on results.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Emulating success instead of trying to create something completely new. Please note that I am not saying, "copy" what others are doing. Look at the basic structure of a tactic, campaign, advertisement, or event and use the same formula as a basis for developing your own tactics.
- Realizing great marketing ideas are used over and over again with just the right twist to make them fit a specific business. Focus on results, and choose imitation over innovation to create your own twist on a proven, winning technique.
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we are
It’s a fact that most salespeople end up in sales because they either can’t stand or can’t do administration work. You probably already guessed that but did you know that the most productive salespeople are also usually the best at administration work? Yes, that’s right; the top performers in your company are probably the best at their paperwork.A well known rule of thumb is that generally about eighty percent of any company’s sales come from twenty percent of its workers, the eighty-twenty rule right. However, what most people don’t know is that despite the fact that this top twenty percent produce mountains more paperwork than the lowest producers in the company they don’t produce even half the errors! If you ask any sales manager who spends more time chasing paperwork from, his highest or lowest producers, he’ll certainly tell you it’s the latter.Why? Because the top twenty percent are too busy making money to be answering avoidable questions about illegible order forms and other pieces of paperwork. They get it right the first time. Time is money; make it work for you not the other way around.The first rule of paperwork is if it has to be done at some stage, do it now. Make your paperwork the first part of your daily routine; don’t leave it until late in the day when you’re exhausted. Having the nagging thought of all that paperwork waiting for you at your des
Do you think you have a product or service that will practically sell itself?
Trust me - you don't.
There is a misconception among small business owners that, with the right product or service, your customers will simply "find" you when you open your doors for business. Whether you have a physical storefront on a corner lot in the busiest part of downtown, or a graphically pleasing online storefront offering easy access to your hot products and services, your customers will not find you if you do not market to them.
The day you open for business is the day you put on your "marketer's hat" and never take it off. You must consistently move product, or schedule service time.
To stay in business you must profit.
To profit you must sell.
To sell you must market.
The good news is that, with a marketing strategy, you take the control out of your potential customers' hands and put it into your own. If you have a product that will "practically sell itself," then your marketing job will be easy. Just remember that the job must still be done.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Defining your niche market and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that differentiates you from your competition.
- Developing a marketing action plan and strategy to reach your niche market with your USP message.
Marketing is an age-old practice with some very basic principles. Yet, I'm sure you've read many marketing information products that stress the importance of being innovative and creative with your marketing efforts. It's easy to get caught up in the innovation process and forget that the REAL focus should be on results.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Emulating success instead of trying to create something completely new. Please note that I am not saying, "copy" what others are doing. Look at the basic structure of a tactic, campaign, advertisement, or event and use the same formula as a basis for developing your own tactics.
- Realizing great marketing ideas are used over and over again with just the right twist to make them fit a specific business. Focus on results, and choose imitation over innovation to create your own twist on a proven, winning technique.
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we ar
"Grass-roots change presents senior managers with a paradox: directing a 'nondirective' change process. The most effective senior managers in our study recognized their limited power to mandate corporate renewal from the top. Instead, they defined their roles as creating a climate for change, then spreading the lessons of both successes and failures. Put another way, they specified the general direction in which the company should move without insisting on the specific solutions." — Michael Beer, Russell Eisenstat, and Bert Spector, Why Change Programs Don't Produce ChangeOrganization change and improvement planning calls for systems, processes, and discipline. These are often top-down, organization-wide approaches. Developing change champions and supporting local initiatives takes leadership. Like innovation, many change and improvement paths are discovered accidentally by change champions blazing new trails (strategic opportunism).These can then be formalized and made passable for the whole wagon train. This is an important part of organizational learning. Change and improvement processes evolve and change to fit the shifting environment and what's being learned about what works and what doesn't. Both top-down and local, or bottom-up, approaches are needed. The challenge is finding the right balance.Managers play a pivotal role in the success or failure of any o
The day you open for business is the day you put on your "marketer's hat" and never take it off. You must consistently move product, or schedule service time.
To stay in business you must profit.
To profit you must sell.
To sell you must market.
The good news is that, with a marketing strategy, you take the control out of your potential customers' hands and put it into your own. If you have a product that will "practically sell itself," then your marketing job will be easy. Just remember that the job must still be done.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Defining your niche market and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that differentiates you from your competition.
- Developing a marketing action plan and strategy to reach your niche market with your USP message.
Marketing is an age-old practice with some very basic principles. Yet, I'm sure you've read many marketing information products that stress the importance of being innovative and creative with your marketing efforts. It's easy to get caught up in the innovation process and forget that the REAL focus should be on results.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Emulating success instead of trying to create something completely new. Please note that I am not saying, "copy" what others are doing. Look at the basic structure of a tactic, campaign, advertisement, or event and use the same formula as a basis for developing your own tactics.
- Realizing great marketing ideas are used over and over again with just the right twist to make them fit a specific business. Focus on results, and choose imitation over innovation to create your own twist on a proven, winning technique.
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we ar
Does your website increase confusion or does it reduce confusion.Remember confused people do not buy; they go looking for more information.Your job is to give them that information, or at least enough information to give them the confidence to buy your product. You must convince your customers that your product will solve their problem.You do this by providing factual, focused web content and web copy. What’s the difference between web content and web copy?Web copy is the sales pitch, while web content educates or entertains your customer. That doesn’t mean that your web copy can’t or shouldn’t educate your customer, just that web content shouldn’t be a pure sales pitch.A great example of this is a white paper. A white paper provides your customers with the information to understand what is needed.They need to understand how your product benefits them, how it solves their problem. Your white paper may even identify a problem they didn’t know existed.If your white paper has identified a need, your web copy can make an emotional appeal for the sale.Another example of this is a targeted marketing article published on your website. Where a white paper may tackle a complete subject and take several pages, articles cover a specific piece of the subject.Breaking the subject into segments allows you
Marketing is an age-old practice with some very basic principles. Yet, I'm sure you've read many marketing information products that stress the importance of being innovative and creative with your marketing efforts. It's easy to get caught up in the innovation process and forget that the REAL focus should be on results.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Emulating success instead of trying to create something completely new. Please note that I am not saying, "copy" what others are doing. Look at the basic structure of a tactic, campaign, advertisement, or event and use the same formula as a basis for developing your own tactics.
- Realizing great marketing ideas are used over and over again with just the right twist to make them fit a specific business. Focus on results, and choose imitation over innovation to create your own twist on a proven, winning technique.
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we ar
Brochures are a very effective way of communicating to a large audience in a cost-effective manner. Be it a corporate entity or a government organization, the best way to send across a message is through a brochure. Not only is a brochure informative, it is also visually appealing and easy on the eye as it contains a number of pictures, either of the products of the company or the services provided by it.Brochures come in various kinds – one can go for a simple, no-frills brochure or one with a glossy finish, special paper and fancy patterns. Brochures can also be either folded once, twice or even thrice. A good brochure, it is said, can distinguish a company that has arrived from one that is still struggling. A good brochure is like a good visiting card – while the message is essentially the same, the way it is communicated says a lot about the company.Apart from the number of folds, the number of colors it uses also distinguishes a brochure. Most brochures come in four-color printing. Moreover, the kind of paper also determines the quality of the brochure.Depending upon the look desired, a company could go for varnish-added paper, matte paper, glossy paper or even an aqueous coating on the paper. An aqueous coating gives an even glossier feel compared to varnish. It also adds scuff-resistance and gives a rich feel to the brochure. It also adds life to it and ma
The fear of failure can be powerful. So powerful that we do everything we can think of to prevent it. Yet, there is a point at which we are so busy preparing, organizing, and researching to prevent failure that we never get around to the actual marketing of the business. Here are two things to remember:
- Activity is not productivity.
- In order to sell a million of something, you have to sell the first ONE.
- Doing something! If you believe in your business and have done your detective work, it's time to dive into the marketing pool. Start small, track results and build from there.
- Not being afraid to make a mistake. Mistakes are the entry to success. At the very least, a failed promotion means you have SUCCESSFULLY determined what promotion does not work. And, to learn what does NOT work is a valuable tool in getting you closer to discovering what WILL work.
MONSTROUS Marketing Mistake Number 5: Boredom
When I was working for an ad agency many years ago, I had one client that was running an extremely successful ad campaign. After about six months, I received a phone call from the client. He wanted to develop an entirely new campaign. When I asked, "why?" he simply said, "I'm bored with the one we have."
What?
That client may have had the money to spend on a new campaign due to "boredom" but you and I usually don't. Yet, I've often seen my small business clients switch promotions for the same reason. This is detrimental to your business!
"Losing money" is a reason.
"Boredom" is not.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Remembering that, what is old to you, is new to an untapped target market. If you have a promotion that is consistently getting you results, stick with it until results show you its time for change.
- Testing new promotions without abandoning the current one. Then track results. Never swap a current promotion with a new one that hasn't been tested.
Joining the Chamber of Commerce and schmoozing at association meetings can put you in contact with vendors and possible joint venture partners, and will be invaluable exposure for you as a community supporter - but it will rarely generate substantial sales leads.
Everyone else who attends these "meet and greet" assemblies is there to do the same thing you are. You may be able to make some valuable contacts for future ventures and promotions, but one-on-one networking is time-consuming and results are unpredictable.
Avoid this mistake by:
- Treating networking opportunities the same as any other marketing tactic. Track re
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