Marketing Trap #28: Marketing Without Boundaries

From 99 Marketing Traps and How To Avoid Them*

Most marketers would agree that hunting for prospects with a rifle is much more effective – and more cost effective – than firing off a shotgun. Once again, actions in the real world suggest a different reality.

When our mindset is all about getting more, it’s hard to see why we should leave anyone out. Everyone would benefit from what we offer (or they should). Everyone, if they knew the whole story, would want to be our customer (or should want to).
So in the spirit of not wanting to leave anyone out, marketers who want it all dilute their resources (i.e., budget, people and attention span) in a vain attempt to reach everyone … and not miss out on anyone.

Trying to be all things to all prospects inevitably shrinks margins and drains credibility … in a marketplace that is already bombarded with too many messages. Even if you have unlimited marketing resources (and I would love to meet that company, though I haven’t found it yet), it still won’t be enough.

How To Help A Brand That Has Fallen Into This Trap:

The problem here is the whole idea of marketing as hunting. The prospects that can really bring you profitable business growth are too elusive to hunt, and too empowered to let you get close enough for your shotgun to reach them. (Thank the Internet for that.)

Stop hunting. Start cultivating. There’s more than enough acreage available to you. And regardless of how much acreage you have, you wouldn’t consider planting every type of crop available.

What kind of harvest do you want? Do what you do best. Take super care of the buyers who already believe in you, and give them a reason to do some of your marketing for you through their own endorsements. You can’t promote yourself better than they can.


*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #76: Assuming Sales Guys Don't Know Marketing

From 99 Marketing Traps and How To Avoid Them*

On the surface, that is generally true. They don’t know the mechanics of mass marketing (though they have been introduced to enough of it to think they do).

They generally don’t understand pricing and positioning and distribution on a macro level. And they certainly don’t have an expert’s grasp of advertising and point-of-purchase promotion.

They know what they like to see. They know what they think will work. And with any savvy at all, they know what’s worked in the past.

But you don’t rely on them for their marketing expertise. That expertise is what the marketing manager is supposed to bring to the job. And yet too often, the sale guys’ understanding of the dynamics that are at play in the marketplace are overlooked just because those guys are sales pros, not marketing pros.

That understanding is very valuable intellectual property, and overlooking it could be very costly to your marketing.

How To Help A Brand That May Have Fallen Into This Trap:

Sales pros have something of great value for marketers, something that makes them one of the most important resources a marketing manager has.

More than anyone else in your company, they have insider’s knowledge of your buyers, whether they are channel partners or end users. They know these people the way you wish you could know them … and can.

If you want to know what’s really going on where you are selling, spend at least a day or two on the road each month with your sales force. Meet the people who will make both of you successful. You will absorb more practical insight than you would ever find in a research report. And once you’ve won his confidence, the sales pro will be happy to have you along.


*Available now from Amazon.

Marketing Trap #71: Working An Old List

From 99 Marketing Traps and How To Avoid Them*

There’s a saying in direct marketing that the gold is in the list.

The better your list of prospects, the better your chance of finding sales among them.

If the list is lousy, no clever offer or deep discount can turn it into gold. If the list is outdated, it is probably worth little more than no list at all.

How To Help A Brand That Has Slipped Into This Trap:

Commit to keeping your working list updated. How much is enough? You need annual updates at the minimum. A six-month revision will bring more dollars to your bottom line.

The credibility of your list enhances the value of all the other marketing functions you rely on. How much is bottom-line efficiency worth?



*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #4: Believing That The Value Of Value Added Is Forever

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them*

One proven winning strategy is to do more for your buyers than a competitor is willing to do.

More product for less, better service for less … it’s all about winning business any way you can, doing whatever it takes to add customers.

The problem is, at what price? How far can you cut price? How much more service and attention can you provide, and still stay profitable?

Trying to do more may seem admirable, but it can also be a marketing narcotic: When do you stop? How do you stop?

And if you do stop delivering more – because you can no longer afford to, or there simply is no more to deliver – what will be the effect on the buyer and on your sales results?

Will buyers live on the gratitude of what you have already done for them and keep buying from you out of devotion for what you did for them in the past?

Uhhh, … not likely.

Here’s the reality with buyers: Give them more than what they expect today, and that “value added” will become their expectation tomorrow. Deliver anything less tomorrow, and they will feel gypped.

Deliver the same, and they will wonder why they just don’t feel as good as they once did about buying from you. All they know is that something is different, and gee, someone else might be better. Or just as good … and cheaper.

If you’re going to make added value the linchpin of your competitive strategy, do so with the realization that once you start, there’s no backing away without damaging buyer relationships and top-line sales.

How To Help A Brand That Has Fallen Into This Trap:

Don’t go there. Doing more than expected will win you sales and short-term customer affection, but at what price? It certainly won’t win you business in a way that is profitable, or sustainable.

What you did yesterday doesn’t really matter in today’s marketplace. The mindset for today’s customer is, what’s in it for me right now? They ask that question at every sales opportunity. And the only confirming answer that matters is this: “I buy from this company because their quality is good (i.e., good enough) and I know they’ll take care of me. I can’t be sure that the competitors will do the same, and I don’t have time to really check those guys out.”

Don’t give away more than you are asking the customer to pay for. If the “more” you deliver today is inherently better than what customers can get from your competition, great! Just don’t try to deliver more today than you can reasonably expect to be able to deliver profitably from now on.


*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #59: Failing To Tell The Buyer What To Do

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them*

Assumption is the mother of all aborted sales.

Assuming that the prospect will know what to do at any point in the buying process will, in most cases, assure that the prospect will never graduate to buyer … and you will have lost not only the immediate sale but also the more profitable repeat sales that are waiting to find your bottom line.

That’s a crime … for both the seller and the prospect. If your offer genuinely matches my need, then I want what you have, as soon as you can get it to me.

You should leave no doubt in the prospect’s mind as to how to order. You should leave no doubt that the prospect should order and be glad he did for the rest of his life.

However, whether you’re looking online or in print, you’ll see direct response vehicles that neglect to show you, step by step, how you are supposed to do business with the seller.

It takes only a single doubt to keep you from completing an order you should want to make. Not knowing how to complete the order is more than enough doubt to keep anyone from buying.


How To Help A Brand That Has Fallen Into This Trap:

If you are producing or approving a selling piece – one whose success will be measured in term of direct sales generated – there is an easy and inexpensive way to stay away from this trap.

Go to someone who is not directly involved with the creation of the direct response piece. Offer that person a dollar and ask for thirty seconds of his or her time.

Slide one of the sheets with the text face down to the person and say, “I want you to read this to yourself.” After reading is finished, say, “In your own words, tell me exactly what it wants you to do.”

Write down what they say … verbatim if possible. After five such tests, you’ll know if you have clear ordering directions. If not, you’ll know how to fix them.

*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #91: Believing that Marketing and Advertising Are the Same Thing

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them*

Marketing is a discipline that seeks to understand and leverage how and why buyers buy.

Advertising is how you get a persuasive message out to the people who are most likely to be your buyers, and not the only way.

The marketing manager who focuses mostly on advertising is severely limiting his arsenal of marketing communications advantages.

This is especially true today when the Internet provides access to so many opinions other than the one you can present in your advertising.

Advertising does provide you with the advantage of being able to control the message that goes out, but what about all the other messages going out there in the press and through social media outlets? And what happens when the buyer’s experience with your brand doesn’t match up with the promises of your advertising?

Once, a long time ago, you might have been able to get away with that kind of disconnect by continuing to reach out to new prospects while your buyer victims remained unknown, but no longer.

How to Rescue a Brand that Has Fallen Into This Trap:

For your advertising efforts to succeed, they must be in alignment with all other aspects of your brand and the experience it provides. Public relations, social media and buyers’ experience with the brand at every point of brand contact all carry more weight today than your advertising alone.

Advertising does give you more message control and a more immediate return on investment when it is used as a direct response vehicle, but you need to understand and utilize advertising as just one part of a marketing mosaic.

*Available now from Amazon.

Marketing Trap #48: Discounting for Its Own Sake

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them: A Survival Guide for Marketing Pros and Those Who Hire Them*


Discounting is the last resort of marketers who don’t know their buyers well enough.

But don’t discounts result in more sales? Of course they do. But the cost of using those discounts is more than simply what you are giving up in margins.

Discounts are addictive; once you start discounting, it’s extremely difficult (for some marketers, impossible) to stop.

Discounts can fool you into thinking you’re doing real marketing, when what you’re really doing is surrendering to the notion that what you have to offer is worth less than you wanted to believe. How do you know that the marketplace believes the same thing?

When you discount automatically, you don’t give the marketplace the opportunity to determine your value.

Even worse, discounts inevitably reduce the perceived value of your offering – and your brand. How can your offering actually be worth more when you’re asking for less? Buyers aren’t stupid … certainly not as stupid as marketers who believe the path to prosperity is paved with discounts.


How To Help A Brand That May Have Fallen Into This Trap:

Except for genuine commodities, your price is simply the default consideration when there is nothing else of importance to differentiate your offering from anyone else’s.

When your offering provides superior convenience to anything your competitors can offer, the importance of price goes down. The same is true when your offering provides the buyer with more control, or when your brand’s communication with the buyer is superior to the communication provided by your competitors.

Your buyers want more from your brand, and that more is more important than simply paying less. Stop selling your brand short. Learn what buyers really want, and what’s worth paying more to get.

Listen to them.


*Available now from Amazon.