Doth thou knowest of the Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing? Nay? Then, proceed, fair reader and gaze upon these practices most vile. Twill do thine heart, mind and business good.
OK, enough with the Shakespearian prose.
1) Poorly Defined Metrics
If you haven’t heard it by now, here it is again. You will never know which half of your marketing budget is wasted unless you measure the ROI of your campaigns. Like every other part of a company, marketing must justify its existence and its spending. General measurements such as number of units sold per mailing aren’t good enough.
There is plenty of software out there that can help you track the performance of all of your content from the top of the funnel through sale. Google Analytics is a start but you need to get down to the real nitty-gritty to learn which of your efforts works, which don’t and how to fix them.
As Nike says: Just Do It
2) Unable to Justify Decisions
Along with poorly defined metrics is the inability to justify business decisions. Marketers are stereotyped as creatives who can’t handle finances but that isn’t true. Marketers simply need to start paying attention to how each piece of content and each campaign performs. You must show the reports top management and tell them exactly why placing that banner ad on a non-relevant website was not the best use of marketing budget money but you found out within just a day or two and rectified the matter.
3) Poor Knowledge Management
Some companies leak staff like a sieve and every time someone leaves he takes some institutional knowledge with him. On top of that are all those reports and content that are inaccessible to all but a few people. There’s information spread all over the place in people’s hard drives, on the shelf in storage, and who knows where.
Information Loss = Productivity Loss
A knowledge management system can gather up all that information, classify and categorize it, and make it available to everyone who needs it. With the appropriate search function and filters you can find out whether there is already a white paper on widgets or a data dump on doodads. Sharing knowledge also helps sales make better lead generation decisions.
4) It’s All about You, You, You
It is no longer acceptable to broadcast all the features and benefits of your product or service then sit back and wait for the customers to roll in. The buying decision isn’t about you; it’s about them, the customer. It is about solving their problems, not selling your stuff.
Leads are contacting vendors much further down the funnel than before. Instead of calling a number to talk to a sales rep right away, leads want to research the best solution for the problem and then create a short list of vendors who have probable solutions. Then they call to speak to you…about themselves, not you. The radio station WIIFM has always been top of the ratings on this one.
5) Putting All Eggs in One Basket
Another way to put this is that many marketers spend the majority of their resources on one type of marketing program or on the top converting source. You are all about lead generation. Or you have a banner ad and landing page combo that really works. But other lead generation/nurturing resources are ignored or sit unused.
Like owning stocks, you need to diversify your marketing portfolio to expand your message and to balance out underperforming collateral. Different sections of the funnel, or buying process, often require different content or marketing resources. And you need to provide different ways for your customers to engage with you.
6) Not Responding to Social Media Audience
Now, this is just rude. Social media is called that because you are supposed to be social. This means having a back and forth conversation with social media users, not a monologue that discourages feedback. You have built your online presence; now you must engage and interact.
- monitor mentions of your company or a list of keywords so you can tweet replies
- answer questions posted on Facebook
- respond to comments left on your blog
The worst thing you can do it make people think you are a faceless computer just going through the motions of modern marketing.
7) Inconsistency
This relates to building your brand. You want people to recognize that this website, e-book, Twitter account, and video are all from your company. Anything you have online represents your brand. A consistent look, feel, and sound provide continuity of experience and make it easier for you to be identified from the stack of all those other companies.
Display your logo, coordinate colors, and set a style to everything you do so whether your leads are just entering the buying cycle or are about to purchase, it’s easy for them to find you.
These are seven marketing malpractices that can be deadly to your company. It has never been enough to build a better mousetrap. You must let people know you understand their mouse problem, can give them information on methods of decreasing the mice in their vicinity, and that you happen to have something that will solve their problems with mice.
There are too many other mousetrap companies out there with the same solution as yours. You must find a way to differentiate your product and build relationships before people will flocketh to your door.
