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.

Marketing Trap #35: Doing Business Without A Database

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them*


You really need to know only two things about your buyers: what motivations are at work when they buy your offering, and where to find them.

Learning their motivations is actually quite simple: Learn how to listen, not only to what they are telling you in their words and buying habits, but also in what they are not telling you.

Listening to buyers is a skill. The more you do it, the better you get. The more you listen, the more you learn.

Your learning translates into even better questions (the kind of questions your competitors haven’t even imagined asking), and that makes your listening and learning more profound and productive.

The other need to know is where the buyers are. That takes a database.

Does your company have a data base of buyers, or a mailing list? They are not the same.

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

A list is a list, and if yours is sixty percent accurate you’re probably ahead of most of your competitors.

A database is a tool that can show you not only where your buyers are geographically, but also where they are psychologically. It’s a tool for making connections that can identify current and future trends. And your practice of listening consistently and carefully to buyers will allow you to shape that database into an extraordinarily effective tool for spiking your marketing ROI.

Listening to and understanding your buyers are the best ways to design a database that does just that.


*Available now from Amazon.

Marketing Trap #62: Success Without "Why?"

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them*


Problems inspire roundtable autopsies.

A national account lost, a product recall costing millions, a much-anticipated new product launch that falls flat, a field sales star who defects to a competitor – these are the crises that bring together management teams to determine what really went wrong and why. (And, oh yeah, maybe who’s to blame.)

The marketing function is particularly vulnerable to these inquiries, because what marketing does is so measurable, even if the only measurements available are top-line growth and return on investment. And there’s nothing wrong with looking into what went wrong and why.

The residual of any crisis should be lessons learned. But that’s the mindset of a business more concerned with avoiding losses than realizing new victories.

Why are these kinds of autopsies reserved for disaster analysis? Aren’t there learnable lessons to be gained from successes? Isn’t the template for future success most likely to be found in victories already won?



How to Help a Brand that Has Fallen into This Trap:

Probing the why behind business success is an under-appreciated and under-utilized operational skill.

Knowing why always yields better decisions. The problem is that most companies are better prepared for negative than positive autopsies. We seem naturally more inclined to focus when a problem is involved.

However, when you are dissecting the causes and lessons of an event, whether desirable or undesirable, the process is the same.

Don’t take success for granted. Analyze it. Then duplicate it.

*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #12: Complicating Your Way Out of the Sale

From 99 Marketing Traps and How To Avoid Them ...*


Even the hardest working people have an aversion to work when it comes to making a purchase. And how can you blame them? If you want me to work at buying something from you, I have to wonder why I would go to the trouble.

It’s enough that I am going to give you my money, but money I can replace. The complications you put between me and the close are costing me two intangible commodities I cannot replace: my time and my attention.

Don’t overcomplicate your story, your offer or your close. If you want to keep me as a buyer of your product or service, respect my time and attention. Keep it simple.

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

“It’s just not that simple,” is the lazy marketer’s excuse for not wanting to make it simple for the buyer.

Your prospects want simple. Why would you subject them to anything else? Because complicated is better for them than simple? Because protecting a complicated process from user-friendly streamlining is more important than attracting more buyers and generating more sales?

Or is it because you believe you have more important things to do than make buying easier for people who want to give you their money?

How does your resume look?


*Available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #85: Shoot From The Hip Marketing

Lazy marketers fall into this trap so easily. They don’t like to waste time planning. In a marketplace that is almost continuously in flux, what does a marketing plan really mean?

They have a point there. No marketing plan will successfully translate to marketplace success without in-flight adjustments along the way. But what do you adjust when you don’t have a plan?

How do you measure what works against what doesn’t? Any success you may realize from shoot-from-the-hip marketing is going to come from luck.

How do you duplicate luck? How do you manage it?


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

Marketing is about discipline. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason … and being justly compensated for it.

Marketing without a definite plan is like making a vacation trip without a destination or itinerary. Wherever you end up will be the right place, but will it be where you really want to be?

99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them is available now at Amazon.

Marketing Trap #75: Assuming that Anyone Really Cares About Your Brand

From 99 Marketing Traps and How To Avoid Them*

Somewhere out there is a loyal buyer who loves your brand. There are probably several of them.

But these people are the exceptions to the marketplace.

Most of your buyers are always on the outlook for the best available offer, and right now that just happens to be yours. Some of them could be swayed by a competitor with a better price or some sort of value-added bribe.

Some of them are just in the mood for a change, are just waiting for the right opportunity, and know they can always come back if it doesn’t work out as they expected. (Your brand will forgive them and welcome them back. They know it.)

Think about this: How many of the managers on your executive team would remain company loyal if they were offered twice what they’re making now to join a competitor?

If their brand loyalty could be compromised at the right price, why wouldn’t your buyers be just as sensible?


What to Say to Someone You Know Who May Have Fallen into This Trap:

Buyers are not wedded to your brand. They’re with you as long as they are getting what they want and don’t see a better option. (Fortunately, most of them don’t have time to really investigate all the options out there … unless your brand does something to alienate them into taking the time to make that search.)

It just means you can’t take any of them for granted. You have to continue to expend an effort to keep them that is comparable to the effort you used to win them over in the first place.





* Available in both soft cover version and e-book version (for immediate download).

Marketing Trap # 97: The Mystique Mistake

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

There are brands that have a certain mystique about them … a special value that is recognized even by those who are not buyers now and never will be.

These are the brands everyone has heard of, even if we’re not entirely sure what product or service they stand for. These are the brands that appear in movies and television shows. These are the brands that convey a special pseudo-celebrity anointing on anyone affiliated with them … like a CEO at the country club.

Fame is something desired for every brand, but not at the expense of taking away from what a particular brand is really meant to do: make a deep and wide connection with the values of its best buyers.

Once your brand’s mystique becomes more important than its offering, it becomes easy to promote a brand more for its fame than for what it truly stands for.

It’s easy to lose sight of the product or service that was the reason behind the brand’s existence in the first place. You want your brand to be famous, but not just famous. It has a job to do beyond its own celebrity.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.


Focus on your buyers and their preferences and values. And focus on your offering, and on how well it meets those preferences and values, and how it could do that job better.

Don't settle for fame (or notoriety). Don't settle for less than a true connection ... with money-spending buyers.

Your brand should be your ticket to fortune, not just fame. Don’t settle for a brand that people have heard of and like; that’s the price of entry. Make yours a brand that people actually want to be part of … as buyers.

*Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Trap #56: Measuring ROI for a Moment, Not a Lifetime

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


Precious few companies do any meaningful ROI measurement of their marketing expenditures.

Some don’t know how (though it really isn’t all that difficult). Those companies that think of their marketing costs as a business expense rather than as an investment don’t really think about measuring its return.

Then there are those companies that do calculate ROI on their marketing, but do it on an annual basis. Measuring marketing ROI for the moment is not much better than not doing it at all.

If you are only measuring ROI against new buyer acquisitions, you’re missing an important, profit-boosting insight: that marketing ROI increases dramatically with each repeat purchase.

If you measure ROI only against transactions, your marketing will be under-funded and its effectiveness restricted.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

Think of the cost of buyer acquisition in terms of lifetime buyer value. What is each buyer worth on an average lifetime basis? That’s what you should be investing against.

The lifetime value of each buyer represents the real potential value of each new buyer you attract. It also gives you a truer picture of the real return available for every marketing dollar you spend. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

When top management understands marketing from the perspective of that kindhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif of investment and its real long-term return, you’ll find it easier to get more of the budget you really need to make the kind of marketplace impact that can drive up sales.

*Buy it now at Amazon.com for $59.95

*Buy the e-book now (immediate download) for $29.95

Marketing Trap #68: Believing Your Buyers Are Marketing Experts

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

The people buying your products or services may have content expertise in several areas (in fact, they almost certainly do).

One area where they are not experts is in what it takes to get them to buy. They think they know all about that. They don’t.

Buyers think they can predict which marketing or advertising or promotional strategy will most appeal to them and bring them into the fold. They can’t. Buyers do know how they want to feel after doing business with you.

What they don’t know is the “why” behind what works, or how to duplicate it. That’s why one of the most consistently wasteful marketing exercises involves buyer research that directly asks buyers marketing strategy questions.

When a focus group discussion devolves into a discussion of advertising theory, you might as well head back to the snack table for another bowl of potato chips. You won’t be missing anything you can really use.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

Don’t ask your buyers how to solve your marketing problems. They don’t know, though they will be happy to tell you anyway.

It’s a waste of your time, and theirs. The one thing of value that they can tell you is what is important to them. That’s an area of expertise you can’t get anywhere else.

They can also tell you how they feel in a given situation. They will give you this priceless insight in all sorts of ways, through all their various marketplace behaviors. The better you know them, the better you’ll be able to “read” those behaviors and draw usable insights from them.

Focus groups, on the other hand, are the “speed dating” of market research. Do you really think you’re going to find what you are looking for there?

*Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Trap #5: Settling for Customers

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


A long time ago (say twenty-five years, give or take), the objective for most businesses was to accumulate more customers. More customers meant more sales, more revenue, and more profit. It was simple. Businesses didn’t worry about repeat or back-end/add-on sales. Just find more prospects and sell more stuff … that was the ticket to business prosperity.

These days it doesn’t work quite the same. Finding more customers should still result in more sales, but not necessarily in more profitable sales, or in profit growth overall.

Over the last quarter century, the cost of acquiring new customers has risen dramatically. Since the dot.com boom and bust at the end of the Twentieth Century, focusing all or even most of your marketing resources on new customers has become prohibitively expensive.

That’s why mergers and acquisitions became such popular business growth strategies starting in the 1980s. It was simply more economical to invest in companies than in new customers. And the cost of finding and converting new prospects into buyers today is a lot higher than it was then.

If you’re still spending most of your marketing resources on new customers and wondering why your margins are so hard to maintain, … ah, yes, there is a correlation. And there is something better to invest in than new customers.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

The best way to avoid the “settling for customers” trap is to get out of the mindset that focuses primarily on harvesting new customers rather than harvesting bigger profits.

You shouldn’t be chasing after customers unless you are resigned to peddling commodities, and have aligned your business operations to that reality. (In that case, skip this book. Study Walmart.)

Instead of more customers, what you need are more clients, and here’s the difference: Customers want an immediate solution to an existing problem or need, while clients want to be taken care of, both today and beyond, and are willing to pay more for that caring.

Customers buy a product or service expecting a specific solution to a specific need. They’re all about transactions, not long-term relationships. If the solution they need requires only a commodity, all the better: What’s your best price today?

But providing a commodity isn’t always going to be the best or right solution, even if the buyer insists that a commodity is all he really wants, and all he is willing to pay for. How do you sell a customer on the value of a long-term relationship.
You don’t. You can’t. You look to attract clients who understand the value of long-term business relationships, and leave the customers to the commodity purveyors. Once you’ve been commoditized, it’s hard to protect your margins unless your entire business is geared to operate as a purveyor of commodities.

Most companies today haven’t committed to operating as commodity purveyors (nor have they even admitted to themselves that their offering has been commoditized). They’re at war with their customers, who want more for less, and most companies feel like they’re losing ground to their competitors, who seem to be willing to offer more for less no matter what it costs.

No wonder that acquiring new customers is more expensive – and less rewarding – than it was a quarter century ago. You attract customers with the right product (solution) at the right price (how low can you go?). You attract clients – and more importantly, keep them – by working from an entirely different and more profitable marketing perspective.

*Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Traps #85: Shoot From The Hip Marketing

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

Lazy marketers fall into this trap so easily. They don’t like to waste time planning.

In a marketplace that is almost continuously in flux, what does a marketing plan really mean?

They have a point there. No marketing plan will successfully translate to marketplace success without in-flight adjustments along the way.

But what do you adjust when you don’t have a plan?

How do you measure what works against what doesn’t? Any success you may realize from shoot-from-the-hip marketing is going to come from luck.

How do you duplicate luck? How do you manage it?

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

Marketing is about discipline. It’s about doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason … and being justly compensated for it.

Marketing without a definite plan is like making a vacation trip without a destination or itinerary. Wherever you end up will be the right place, but will it be where you really want to be?

*Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Trap #66 - Marketing Without Public Relations

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

There was a time, not that long ago, when marketing effectiveness was driven primarily by two communications disciplines: advertising and point-of-sale promotion.

The Internet, with its free and unfettered access to information about companies and products, changed all that. It put consumers, not brands, in control of information, in terms of both content and distribution.

That free flow of instant information blunted the impact of traditional advertising, which still has its place in the marketing mix. But good old-fashioned advertising cannot compete in terms of credibility with what consumers have to say about the brands they love or hate.

The best advertising in the world won’t get you to try a restaurant after a good friend has told you that the food or service there is lousy. No coupon can make up for bad word of mouthing.

Advertising alone will not buy credibility and trial the way it used to. If you are marketing a new product or new brand, your chances of succeeding in the launch of that offering are nil unless the thrust of your marketplace communications comes from public relations initiatives.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

Your most extravagant promise of value won’t stand a chance against real news. That’s what both the public and the media want. That means your challenge is to find and leverage the real news in your offering.

If there is no real news, buying advertising exposure won’t make up for the fact that you are offering something that prospects and the media don’t really care about.

If your offering has any real value, then news is there. You just have to dig it out. And then get it to the right media channels.

Sounds like a job for public relations. Embrace it. Use it.

*Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Trap #38: Neglecting the Back End

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

The only “more” that ultimaely matters in business is more profitability.

I don’t know any CEO in his right mind who wouldn’t agree with that. But if you could show your CEO a fool-proof strategy for increasing profitability by reducing gross sales, what are the chances that he or she would leap to embrace that strategy and implement it immediately?

You’re probably right … the chances of it would not be very good.In fact, there wold be whispers about your sanity.

(That's the problem with most of the Marketing Traps: Staying in them can be so safe, and so hard on your sales.)

That’s why strategic proposals for increasing top-line sales – regardless of how small a dent they might make in profitability – are almost always going to be more popular among C-level executives and their wanna-be’s than any strategy that might seem to limit sales – and sales activities – in exchange for higher profitability.

Corporate executives just have a hard time understanding that you can (usually) make more money by selling less (to the right buyers) than you can by selling more (to the wrong buyers … buyers with less back-end sales potential).

That’s why the back end of the sale is so often not fully leveraged – to the detriment of the bottom line. The resources – and more importantly, the way management measures and rewards achievement – are geared more often toward new customers and top-line sales results.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.

You do it with ROI, and with incremental implementation steps.

You need to know your real cost of acquiring new buyers. Then be able to show with numbers the higher profitability of selling to someone who has already bought from you and will require considerably less expense to become motivated to buy again.

The challenge in most organizations is getting those numbers ... real numbers, numbers that can tell you something you can really use. Once you do get those numbers, the higher profitability of selling on the back end will justify itself. Then design a program dedicated to getting more out of back-end selling.

Once you have that program, don’t launch it … test it. Incremental success is the best way to win over a management team locked into top-line thinking.

Available now in both e-book and softcover versions.

Marketing Trap #47

Believing that Unique Sells
From "99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them ..."

Unique is almost always an attention getter. But rarely is it something buyers want.

Unique is inherently risky. It’s a tightrope without a net for the buyer. And yet marketers, and advertising creatives in particular, love to latch on to an offering’s uniqueness and tout it as if unique conveyed a magic appeal.

Blame Rosser Reeves, or at least those who haven’t taken the time to read what he actually wrote when this advertising pioneer came up with the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

The unique part of USP refers to the selling proposition exclusively. It’s what makes your offering unique among all other offerings in your category ... all within the context of what buyers really want and value (that is, know your buyers).

What makes your offering unique among all other offerings in your category is a key distinction that most marketers don’t work hard enough to find and leverage fully. Instead, they settle for what’s unique about the product … even if that uniqueness makes the product less desirable.

They treat the USP as three blanks to be filled in to complete a formula for marketing success. It doesn’t work that way. “Fill in the blanks” marketing is never the way to win the allegiance of those buyers whose passion will make you most profitable.

If You Know Anyone Who's Caught in this Marketing Trap, Here's How to Help Them Out.
The comfortable offering always outsells the incredible one. Don’t strive to be unique with an offering.

Strive to be relevant (which means you have to know what the buyer really wants … and why). Strive to be believable (which means … start with the truth as the buyer understands it).

Strive to make an offer that is easy to buy. Easy to buy will always out pull unique.

Marketing Trap #26 - Trying To Do Too LIttle

From "99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them ..."

Some marketers do enough to “say” they are marketing but in fact are doing next to nothing.

“Oh yeah, we do that.”

Marketing, for these folks, is a check list item … not the engine for sustained business growth.

They probably have a Web site (that no one in the company has visited in more than a month). They probably have an ad (or at least a listing) in the Yellow Pages with no other presence on an ongoing basis.

Occasionally they might get a mention in a local newspaper article that lets them put a check in the “PR done” column (without ever reprinting the article and merchandising the publicity for buyers and prospects).

Maybe they ran a limited flight of radio spots once and saw no corresponding bump in traffic and sales (because – obviously – advertising just doesn’t work for their kind of business).

But they believe in marketing. They believe in getting it done and out of the way.

They believe in not letting marketing get in the way of building their business. (They probably also treat their buyers as transactions rather than as the best marketing asset they could ever have.)

If You Know Anyone Who's Fallen into this Trap, How Do They Get Out?

The trap here is in believing that your marketing work is ever really done (unless, of course, you have closed the doors for good).

Marketing is not something you get done. It’s something you get to do every day with every prospect and buyer. Otherwise, you’re almost certainly not doing enough to see any real impact on business growth.

Doing too little marketing is actually worse than doing nothing. You’re just spending more for the same result.

You should have a marketing check list to make sure that everything you planned gets done as planned. But a marketing check list without a marketing plan is like a catchy advertising jingle that … ooops! … fails to mention the brand: sounds good, sells nothing.

Marketing Trap #20 - Vacuum Marketing

From 99 Marketing Traps and How to Avoid Them

It’s amazing how many companies operate as if they were marketing in a vacuum. They won’t admit it, even to themselves. They know they have real competitors. They know they need to know their buyers thoroughly, even intimately. They know all that. But their actions speak otherwise.

They live on short-cuts and hunches. They act as if yesterday’s results remain the best guide for tomorrow’s strategies.

They focus more on what is on their desks than on what buyers are really saying and thinking (online and in person). They assign pigeon holes to their competition and draw invincibility from their assumptions.

They revel in what they have determined are the critical differences between themselves and their competitors, and they confidently assume that those differences really matter to buyers. (Ironically, most of their competitors believe that they have the same differences.)

What’s driving this vacuum? Is it ignorance or arrogance? Doesn’t matter. Both are deadly to growth. Nothing that lives can survive in a vacuum.

How to Avoid this Trap:

The problem with this trap (as with so many of these marketing traps) is that the victims don’t know they are in it. Ignorance can be comforting, even if it comes at the price of business slipping away.

Wake up! The more you actually interact with buyers, the harder it will be to operate with a vacuum mindset. The more that practice becomes a habit throughout your organization, the more you will be swept out of the vacuum and into a state of sustainable momentum and profitable growth.