Marketing Mistakes You Might Be Making

The last two Thanksgivings have sucked for me, both were preceded by job loss. Fortunately another thing that sucks at many companies helped me get back on my feet. I knew I wanted to switch gears & get into marketing after the first loss, so I headed straight to the library to check out some marketing books. One book called out from the shelves louder than all of the others: Your Marketing Sucks by Mark Stevens. If you click that link you’ll see that many people think that the title is the only good thing about it, but I disagree. For someone who is looking for a thought provoking book before they launch marketing campaigns of their own or have not done any marketing professionally, this is a great read. You don’t have to buy it of course, check your library – or check back here and I’ll highlight important points the author covered.

Mistake 1: You create budget first, goals second (if at all).

Here’s one scenario: Large companies have many departments, and every year the manager of each department is asked to give the executives a number while they are managing ongoing activities. That number is the total budget required to execute whatever it is you want to do in the following year. It’s no different for the marketing department. The problem with that scenario is that it usually doesn’t provide much time for detailed planning. Sure you have historical data to use, but that budget number should really be based on future goals.

Small businesses and individuals are making the same mistake too. They pick a number out of their limited budget to represent how much money they can afford to spend on marketing. Then they run with it. That’s probably not going to achieve the desired goal because they didn’t start with a goal to begin with. Your marketing spend can be unlimited if it does what it’s supposed to: bring in sales!

In either case, you should figure out the following first:

• How the marketing money will be used?
• Who is your Target group?
• What message will you use?
• Create a marketing blueprint
• Determine goals.
• How will the campaign will be measured?
• How will leads be captured?
• How are you going to test, execute, and monitor results?

The next step is relatively simple, go figure out how much each bullet point above will cost. Then you have your new and enhanced budget and are ready for success! Okay, so it’s not that simple, but at least if you’ve done the above process you have some rationale behind your numbers. Things are always changing in business, and it’s likely that you will find that one of your campaigns is performing better than others – so you should put more of your budget there and reduce the spend on under-performing campaigns. Setting up realistic expectations is the key, and that’s why avoiding this mistake is so important when you start.

Next in this series, Mistake 2: Failing to Execute Marketing Plans