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Posts Tagged ‘marketing mistakes’

Posted on July 3, 2010 - by Kwame

10 Bad Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

As marketers, we are constantly faced with the challenge of getting leads and converting those leads into customers. Because of the challenging nature of our trade, some of us tend to get frustrated and thus, ignore the basic ingredients needed for getting sales.

We are going to look at some common mistakes marketers make and how to avoid them. If you are making any of these mistakes, get rid of them immediately.

1. Over-promising: When you over-promise, you almost always deliver products that are at or below par with your promises. It’s better to under-promise. Leave some of the good stuff (services or bonuses) and give it to people who take action later as a reward. This will mean, you will be over-delivering on your initial promise. This has worked for me and most other good marketers and it will work for you too.

2. Arguing With Your Customers: Don’t argue with your customers. An argument is bad for business. If a prospect or customer challenges you, don’t tell them they are wrong because they may be right. Telling them they’re wrong will lead to an argument and this will do your business no good.

I remember buying something online and after 2 hours, my account was deactivated without any notice. I didn’t receive an email or a call giving me reasons why my account was deactivated.  I sent an email to support and they told me my account was active. I sent another one and then a third one before I got a message that said something like, “Oh, I just checked your account. It wasn’t active. I have activated it now.”

Then I checked my account again, and it was active. I had to send 3 emails. What they were telling me indirectly when I sent the first 2 was that I was not telling them the truth. Meanwhile, they were the ones not telling the truth about the status of my account. That is bad customer service. I haven’t bought anything again from them ever since.

3. Not studying your better competitors: You can learn and use the techniques that your better competitors are using to rake in sales for their products. Study and emulate their winning selling strategies, product launch strategies and their customer feedback.

The internet has made it possible to learn more about your customers. There are tools like SEMRush that help you know what keywords your customer is using. Again, you can use Twitter search, Facebook and Youtube to study your competitor’s customer feedback. You will know their winning strategies if they use it over and over again. If they use one strategy and stop using it after a little while, it means it went bad. Copy the better strategies but make yours stand out by adding extra value.

4. Lying in sales presentations: Nothing can ever make you suck as a marketer as much as lying in your sales presentation. If your product can’t perform a particular stuff, don’t say it can. If you haven’t sold 1,000’s of products in 24hrs don’t say you have. When just one of your customers find out that you are lying, it spreads out like wildfire and your reputation goes down the drain. You lose your customers to your competitors and it will be hard to get them back. Avoid lies, speak the truth, and you’ll win.

5. Not following-up: After your presentation, some people will buy your product straight away. Others will have to be courted. They may need a better offer or they may need a reassurance. Follow up on your leads and reassure them of your product and offer. Also, invite them to send you any questions they may have about your product via email, Twitter or on phone. They may need some things cleared up before they buy. Find out what it is.

6. Not Using Compliments: Compliments sell products. It is one of the most powerful marketing weapons that will help you sell more and also help start customer relationships. Psychologically, people are happy when you compliment them on their actions. It makes them start to like you.

Examples and Ideas: If you sell shirts, you can say something like, “Excuse me, I am Alfred, I like your suit and I know just what shirt will match it perfectly. Here is my card, call me or visit my website if you want to see some of my shirts”. This is a much friendly approach and you can see there is a compliment in that statement. If you say something like that, you will have the guy thinking, “What? Doesn’t this shirt match my suit?” and he will probably check you out. Be sure not to put the prospect in an embarrassing situation..

Membership site owners and newsletter publishers often use something like, “Bravo on your decision to join us” or “Congratulations on wanting to fulfill your desire” or “You made a right choice to visit us”.

Let’s say you are selling video game CDs, you can say something like, “You bought a wonderful console but there’s no fun in it until you have a game to play on it. Check out all the latest games from our store. We carry the best titles. It’s time to make your friends jealous.”

The compliment here is “You bought a wonderful console”. The last statement, “Time to make your friends jealous” sends the prospect or customer imagining what his or her friends will think about his new game. Let’s face it, we all like to impress.

Complimenting people after they have purchased something from you makes it easy to sell more products to them. You know why? When you compliment them, their brains translate it as “You made a smart decision”. So in order to keep that smartness, they will take the same action they took before.

Imagine a hot guy or girl complimenting your perfume or cologne. What will you think? Will you throw away that cologne or keep on using it? Will you buy a different one when the one that got the compliment is finished? I guess not.

That is how the human brain works. We like to feel smart and when someone tells us that we are smart, we always want to show them we still are smart so we do what they want us to do.

When you use compliments, avoid desperation. The whole idea is to make the customer feel like it is their idea when they buy what you are suggesting.

Don’t let it seem like you are trying to sell them another thing. Make it sound like you like their first action but you will suggest they should do this and that to get the complete solution to their needs. Do you get the idea?

7. Not Showing Interest In Your Customer’s Problem: Offer to solve your buyers problems with your products or services and then they will naturally be interested in you and keep coming back.

If you listen to what your market wants and let them know your product can solve their problems, you will most likely make the sale.

You can gather info through surveys or requesting feedback about your products or services through email, suggestion boxes in your office, telephone, etc. This is how you can find out your market’s problems.

People are interested in themselves more than anybody else. This principle also applies to when they are buying something so you have to make sure they get what they want; not what you want them to buy from you. Persuade your prospects with a good offer, excellent communication and a great product.

Be a good listener and encourage your prospects to tell you about what they need. Also, encourage them to give you their complaints about your products and their ideas of how to improve it. Get them involved and you all will see positive results.

8. Not Showing Appreciation: Show appreciation to your prospects after each action they take. Send them cards during occasions like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. Write a short message to them and make sure you refer to them by their individual names. This makes the card more personal.

You can finish the message by leaving a discount code by saying something like: “Use this code during this festive season to get a 20% discount on our items” or you can also say something like, “Bring this card to any of our shops for a special gift when you order items costing $100 and above”. Don’t sell any particular item. Just give them a discount code.

You can also send a “thank you” note even if it’s not Christmas or even if your customer has not ordered anything in a while. Make sure it is branded to fit your business; with your logo, contact details and USP.

Again, don’t try to sell them anything in your thank you note. Just keep it simple like “(your customer’s name), Thank you for buying from us. We value you as our customer and we hope to be at your service again soon. We promise another special buying experience or a better one since we constantly keep improving.”

You will increase sales and will get a customer who will stay with you for long if you show them how valuable you think they are by appreciating them like this. If you love your customers, they will love you back. Period!

9. Making Market Assumptions: You can’t assume that your customer will buy your products if you haven’t done any research on what they want and how they want it. You can use the internet to research buyer conversations on the products you’re selling or about to sell. Use Twitter search, your competitor’s Facebook fan page and blogs and find out what their customers complain about in the comments area. When you find a couple of holes, write down which ones you can fill and add it to your production selling process. Using feedback and testimonials from your existing customers also helps you understand them better.

10.Providing inadequate product information: If you are selling a book on marketing, can you please tell us the contents? Some sellers don’t provide enough information about their products but they expect us to buy them. I won’t buy a book that only has “The Sociatic Marketing Book: A book for 21^st century marketers. Price: $27” as its description. Even if it is selling at $1, I will find it difficult to buy because I don’t know what it is actually about. What if it’s like all the other marketing books I have bought and read? I won’t take any chances and I bet your prospects will also feel the same way.  Note: This is not a counter-argument against my first point of under promising. Under-promising involves waiting for customers to heap praises on your products; how it helped them and what they think about each feature. Over-promising is when you praise your products and tell your customers that it is 100% efficient. Instead of praising yourself, let your customers do it for you and use their praises as testimonials in your sales material.

Conclusion:

If you are making any of the mistakes above, make sure you take them out from your marketing. Some of the mistakes will damage your reputation and will sink your sales fast. Change is possible. It only takes some effort and some patience.

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Further reading:

Customer Loyalty Comes from Conversation: ConversationAgent

What Does Your Audience Need: Chris Brogan