Don’t get caught up in these common mistakes. While planning your 2013 marketing plans take a careful look at the below “sins” and tailor your future strategy to diverge from these.
- Greed- Using Social Media as a tool to gather the most “likes” “fans” or “followers”. Social media can be a deceptive tool making a Company feel that they are helping their brand image by acquiring the most popularity. Popularity is exciting, but what you are really looking for is engagement. If your followers aren’t engaging with your questions and receiving your content, a lot of time and money could be wasted.
- Lust- Focus more on your customers than the competition. It is easy to get stuck in a game of copying your competitions’ plans. Instead of spending all of your funds trying to match the new TV commercial of your competitor, try to focus more on your target audience and develop a relationship with them. See what really matters to them and ask what their experience with your brand is. You may find that you will actually gain a much better (and less expensive) business strategy this way.
- Gluttony– We have seen far too many brands that want to have it all. A Facebook page, Pinterest board, Twitter account, TV and newspaper ad. Rather than worrying about the quantity we recommend taking a look at the quality of your marketing. Is your twitter account actively being updated, is your newspaper ad saying anything about your brand? Sometimes more is actually less and too much marketing “noise” can hurt your brand image.
- Sloth– It’s not too late to kick up your marketing! Let’s face it, in this day and age with so much competition and movement in the markets you are not going to be able to just have your brand “exist”. Marketing is everywhere, from packaging to social media. If you aren’t actively sharing your brand message, you will be left behind.
- Wrath- Focusing only on prospects at the end of the buying cycle. The buying cycle has changed dramatically and studies have found that you now need to “nurture” leads until they are ready to buy. This means it’s imperative to stop discarding prospects that aren’t ready to buy right now. Customers want to trust your brand so become the thought leader in your industry and their source of knowledge. This way when the time comes and they are ready to purchase, you will be the first name that they think of.
- Envy- Don’t settle for a turn-key marketing solution. Your brand is better than having to follow a standard package of marketing that “everyone is using”. We understand that time and money are important variables in a marketing campaign but regardless of your budget, you can have a tailored program. Think about what your key initiatives are and which marketing mediums are best at communicating these. From there, start by focusing small on just a few marketing ideas with good content. As you see success with these small but focused initiatives, you will be able to start funding more.
- Pride– Don’t be too proud to look at your analytics! Even the best marketing companies study their results. As new technologies evolve, you should always keep a watchful eye on your Google analytics to see if there are some minor tweaks to keep your content efficient and up-to-date. It’s best to tweak your campaign continuously than waiting and having to do a big overhaul of your campaign later.
