• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Marketing Tactics vs Strategy
  • How to Advertise Your Business
  • About Niche Marketing
  • Contact Me
Beyond Niche Marketing

Beyond Niche Marketing

Get more customers. Grow your business.

  • About the Author
    • About the Book
      • Beyond the Niche
  • About Niche Marketing
    • How to Identify Your Niche Market

The Six Biggest Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

August 22, 2008 by Kathryn Hendershot 2 Comments

Beyond Niche Marketing is pleased to offer a guest post opportunity to Jodi Kaplan of KaplanCopy.

The Six Biggest Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

1. Spraying and Praying

What’s spraying and praying? It’s closing your eyes, spinning around, and hoping to hit something with your marketing.

Here’s a true story. Mike and David each decided to start their own businesses. Both want to publish e-newsletters offering benefit information to US military personnel. Mike raised $7 million and used it for office space, staff, furniture, and ads on the sides of buses in Washington, DC. David spent $30 to run off 500 issues of the first newsletter on bright yellow paper and stood in front of the Pentagon handing them out to people as they left the building.

Mike burned through the cash in six months, went broke, and lost his house. David had 250 signups by the time he got home that first day, and built it virally to 300,000 subscribers.

Thousands of people saw Mike’s ads, but they weren’t necessarily military people – the target audience. David, on the other hand, figured out where to find his target audience, went there, and offered them something relevant.

If you want to catch trout, go to a river, not the ocean.

2. Believing your own hype

Sony ran an ad two years ago with a headline that said, “ It’s not the first Blu-ray Disc Player on the market. It’s the first Sony. (Isn’t that the same thing?) “

Nope. The headline says nothing about what the customer will gain by buying the product. Why is Sony better? What will this machine give me that other players won’t? Will I be the first to own one?

3. Talking about features instead of benefits

A benefit is something about your product or service that makes your customers’ lives better. Tell your prospects why and how your product helps them rather than what it looks like or how you package it.

A feature of a calculator is that it’s solar powered. A benefit is that you never have to buy batteries. To go back to the Sony example, what if they’d said, “Our system installs in minutes without complicated instructions. You’ll feel as if you have your own private movie theatre.”

Highlighting benefits such as these in your advertising will make your product more appealing. Benefits can also help you stand out from your competitors. Imagine if you promised (and delivered) easy installation and the companies competing with you didn’t. Which do you think people (especially non-technical people) would choose?

4. Succumbing to Super Bowl ad syndrome (splurging on one big ad)

It’s tempting to think that a big advertising splash can get you lots of attention. InfoUSA’s SalesGenie Super Bowl ads have become famous (maybe infamous). The company says that their ads target small businesses, sales people, and entrepreneurs. Lots of people watch the Super Bowl, but they don’t necessarily fit that profile.

For $2.7 million (per ad), they could have run an ongoing mail, email, and banner ad marketing campaign focusing on niche markets and small business magazines and reached ONLY the people they say are their target audience.

5. Judging your marketing based on what appeals to you, rather than your audience

Many years ago, the company I worked for was producing a brochure for a product aimed at Latin America. I went to the graphics department to take a look at it, and saw that the design was purple and black. I said, “We need to change it.” Now, I don’t like purple, but that wasn’t the problem. In largely Catholic Latin America, purple and black are the colors associated with funerals!

6. Talking about yourself

Many businesses make the mistake of talking about how long they’ve been in business, or how many stores they have. Your customers just want to know if you have something that solves their problems. Say “you” and “your”, rather than “I” and “we”. It’s about them, not you.

If you sell grass seed, don’t go on and on about the 10 years you spent hybridizing seeds and growing test patches. Instead, tell people they’ll get a beautiful, thick green lawn with very little work. Show pictures of happy customers in front of their lawns, with before and after pictures. Better yet, include testimonials about how happy they are with your product.

It’s not about your grass seed; it’s about their lawn.

Jodi Kaplan fixes “broken” marketing. If your marketing is costing more money than it’s making and people leave your Web site without buying, your marketing is broken. If you’d like to fix it, visit KaplanCopy for free articles, marketing resources, and information on marketing services.To get your free 25-page Small Business Marketing Guide, visit http://www.kaplancopy.com/free_guide.html

Filed Under: Beyond Marketing Tagged With: Beyond Marketing, expert copywriting, expert copywriting services

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michelle says

    August 22, 2008 at 11:20 am

    These are some great tips. They all emphasize how important it is to focus on the consumer, not the business. The example in the first tip with Mike and David says it all. Reach your target audience, tell them what they want to hear, and you will be successful.

    Reply
  2. Graham Strong says

    August 25, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    “It’s not about your grass seed; it’s about their lawn” – perfect! That’s the best description I’ve heard contrasting features and benefits.

    I’d also like to add to #2 — I’ve seen too many companies act like they have hype to believe in, just to try to persuade customers to try them. If they act like the big dog on the block, they think they’ll be the big dog on the block. Although it is good to be confident and have a positive vision about where you want to go, you also need to be realistic enough to say that you are not there yet…

    ~Graham

    Graham Strongs last blog post..Find and Replace – Update!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

More to See

Newspaper Advertising

Newspaper Advertising Basics

July 26, 2022 By Kathy

3 Marketing Tips for Small Business

June 2, 2022 By Kathy

Tags

Advertising Advertising 2.0 advertising and marketing for small business owners advertising and the web Advertising Effectiveness Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategies Beyond Marketing blog blogging and branding branding branding and entrepreneurs building trust business building business marketing strategies business owner creating a product for a niche audience customer's reasons for buying Customer Service free PR major sale marketing campaign marketing magic marketing messages marketing plan niche market Niche Marketing niche marketing for small businesses niche marketing strategy niche marketing wisdom PR small business small business advertising small business advertising solution small business marketing small business marketing consultant Small Business Marketing Strategies Small Business Marketing Success Online social marketing Social Media Marketing target audience the long term value of a customer transparency viral marketing word of mouth advertising word of mouth marketing

Footer

Low Cost, High Yield Marketing

Beyond Niche Marketing is a guide to effectively marketing your small business without breaking the bank.

Pick up your digital copy of Beyond the Niche for only $9.99 by clicking the button below.

 

Recent

  • Local Advertising to Reach Your Niche Market
  • Newspaper Advertising Basics
  • 3 Marketing Tips for Small Business
  • Niche Market Products Can Grow Your Business
  • Niche Market Ideas and How to Find Them

Search

Tags

Advertising Advertising 2.0 advertising and marketing for small business owners advertising and the web Advertising Effectiveness Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategies Beyond Marketing blog blogging and branding branding branding and entrepreneurs building trust business building business marketing strategies business owner creating a product for a niche audience customer's reasons for buying Customer Service free PR major sale marketing campaign marketing magic marketing messages marketing plan niche market Niche Marketing niche marketing for small businesses niche marketing strategy niche marketing wisdom PR small business small business advertising small business advertising solution small business marketing small business marketing consultant Small Business Marketing Strategies Small Business Marketing Success Online social marketing Social Media Marketing target audience the long term value of a customer transparency viral marketing word of mouth advertising word of mouth marketing

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in