A well–tuned marketing campaign is a beautiful thing. Your advertising not only connects with just the right prospects, but it seems like everyone is talking about you, your product, or service.
Sales come in at a nice pace. Profits mount as you quietly chuckle thinking how little you spent on marketing. Suddenly, moving your company forward doesn't seem hard at all.
Unfortunately, marketing rarely works that easily, at least at first. Most marketing gets held back by a few very common mistakes. Let's look at a few along with ways you can easily correct them to get your advertising back on track.
Your marketing gets lost in the crowd
Each of us gets bombarded by thousands of advertising messages every day.
From magazines, to radio ads, to a TV talking in the background, to the flier left on your front door, the daily ad barrage continues.
Prospects quickly learn to ignore marketing. After all, most of it has very little to do with their concerns. Prospects only pay attention to marketing that is radically different or marketing that speaks directly to their most immediate concerns.
The first ad never works. You get consistent, long–term results by continuing your ad over weeks and months.
Separate your ad from the pack by making it talk directly to something the prospect really cares about. It should point out a problem your product or service can solve.
Make the language of your ad sound like the way customers would describe the problem, the solution, and the way they feel after the problem is solved.
Campaign targets an audience that is too broad
Before you can address the specific concerns of a prospect, you have to narrow the groups of people your marketing is reaching.
An ad in your big city newspaper will reach a great many people, but very few may be in the market to buy your improvement product or services. Instead run your ad in a trade magazine.
TV and newspapers work very well to sell products used by a large, diverse mass of people. You can target TV and newspapers further by putting ads on specialized cable TV programs or in special neighborhood editions of newspapers. Likewise, you can get better targeting and lower rates by placing ads in regional editions of national magazines.
Your ad budget gets blown in a one-shot marketing gamble
This mistake is one of the most common and often heart–breaking problems. A new store will spend everything they have on one radio spot, full–page newspaper ad, or direct mailer. If the first try doesn't work (and it often doesn't), there is no money left for a second or third try.
Marketing isn't consistent
The old saying among veteran marketers is the first ad never works. You get consistent, long–term results by continuing your ad over weeks and months.
It may be true that familiarity breeds contempt, but not in marketing. Familiarity develops awareness and confidence in prospects so they buy.
Marketing fails to tie different media together
Too many times the direct mail campaign a company does has little to do with the magazine ads they are running. Instead, make your ads in different media all relate to each other.
Take the audio from your TV commercial and adapt it for a radio spot. Use a still from the TV commercial in your magazine and newspaper ads. Take the still photograph and some of the verbiage from your spot and use it in a direct mail campaign.
The continuity will increase your chances of breaking through the marketing clutter to really reach prospects.
Put your Web site to work
Use your Web site to give visitors all the information they need to understand and buy your product or service. Have your television spots, radio commercials, print ads, and sales letters all send people to your Web site where they can spend as much time as they need perusing your in–depth material.
