3 Marketing misconceptions and how to face them

As the startup market expands, marketing becomes increasingly important for a company formation and external exposure.?

Every year, thousands of startups emerge, fuelled by innovative ideas and great initial intentions, all of them with one common goal: to go ‘viral’ and become the first stop-shop of an X product.?

Marketers' roles are in high demand, with companies requiring strong competencies and capabilities across different channels to make the dream come true.?

But what does it really mean to launch a product and what does it take to make it successful??

My fellow marketers will agree with me when I say that we’ve been challenged over the years by people around us jumping to debatable conclusions based on ‘personal feelings’ and non-constructive criticism from non-marketers (but-trust-me-I-know-what-I’m-saying-based-on-personal-experience!).?

Here are some of the most common misconceptions all marketers have experienced at least once in their career.?

1. Marketing will make it happen fast??

The questions every business owner should ask himself when hiring a CMO, are:

Do I have clear ideas on my future goals? What do I exactly want to achieve in the next 6/12/24 months? How much do I expect to grow my business, and why? Have my calculations taken into account reliable past data and market demand/offer? Do I have some budget to start off?

Some business stakeholders might just go about the first question by answering: of course, I’m sure of what I want. I want to scale my business! Agreed, that's great. But what percentage are you looking at, and in what timeframe? I guarantee if you don't know what you want, and if you don’t set your expectations, you’ll end up being disappointed.?

The kick-off excitement is often followed by discouragement due to non-tangible results in the short run (aka ROI). This leads to marketing budget decrease or re-allocation, internal restructuring and change of strategy.?

But in the way I see things, marketing it’s like a campaign algorithm: you need to give it time to optimize and bring results. Depending on the industry, audience and other factors, what works well for a company will not work so well for another, obviously.?

Initial ambiguity or lack of data to back up your expectations is what frequently leads to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction will inevitably lead to frustration, which will benefit no one.?

To avoid that and build a healthy environment and successful business, don’t be afraid to inquire about the overall business direction and the KPIs that marketing must drive. Additionally, ensure that the objectives are SMART.

2. The more, the merrier

For some reason, there is a widespread belief that involving more and more people from various departments within a company's marketing strategy will improve its effectiveness.?Marketing is by nature a questionable subject.?

Is that topic where everybody feels entitled to give a judgment, because it’s ‘public’, and everyone can see it. But try asking yourself, would you ever interfere in the work of a backend developer, strongly advising to change the code of a webpage because you believe it is poorly written? No, of course not. You don’t have the expertise to do that. The same should apply to marketing.?

If departments other than marketing become overly involved, executing ideas and actions based on multiple business directions can be frustrating and ineffective, simply because we cannot please everyone. Consider a multinational corporation with hundreds of employees: how can everyone be on the same page with campaign messaging for a product launch? Some things are obviously subjective, and don't get me wrong, everyone has the right to express their opinion, but if a marketing team has been hired, chances are they know what they're doing better than others. Unless the entire team consists of juniors!

So ignore the marketing want tobes: practical experience is what counts. They are not entitled to a substantial judgment if they did not eat from the same plate. That is not to say that people should not express their own opinions. Constructive criticism is what will help you grow, as opposed to imposing an idea and wanting to implement it regardless of the circumstances.

Before beginning the campaign, it is best to agree on a clear direction, messaging, and expectations. This will assist in keeping everyone happy and informed throughout the process.?After all, you'll all be working toward the same goal: making the company successful.

3. Spending money means getting results quickly?

We all agree that would be phenomenal, but doesn’t really work like that. Otherwise all businesses out there would be successful.?

On the top-3 there is the evergreen: ‘’I want to be on the first page of Google. Can we make it happen next week?’’

It is true that marketing is seen by everyone, but it is also the 'unseen': the long-term effects of the brand activations you are carrying out today are the future deals of tomorrow.

The marketing team's efforts have resulted in how people 'perceive' your brand right now and in 5 years. These will not necessarily result in a completed deal today, but will produce tangible results tomorrow. Spending money and watching a business grow over time is great, but what you ultimately want is long-term, organic growth.

Consider an offline campaign: outdoor billboards cost thousands of dollars, but do you really think they bring ROI right off the bat? Why, then, would the world's largest corporations continue to do so? Tracking their performance will be difficult as well (at this regard, Google just recently released amazing news for out-of-home ads) but these activations are part of brand awareness campaigns that will contribute to people's sentiment and brand perception, ultimately leading to future sales that are not directly attributable to that specific activation.

Similarly, when running a digital campaign, whether it's search, lead generation, traffic, or native, the provider's algorithm will always take some time to understand what's going on and test the waters. Even after the initial discovery phase, it is extremely unlikely that excellent results will be obtained on the first shot.?

All of this may sound daunting and time-consuming, but that is where the true beauty lies: working to find and maintain that sweet spot for your business. Once you understand what works for you, the fulfilment will be unparalleled. At this point, you want to keep doing that while allocating a smaller percentage for experiments.

So, keep testing and optimizing!

Conclusion: what pays off, as everything else in life, is consistency. If one strategy is not working, change something and try again: only those who stick to it will make it. Marketing is such a fascinating yet complicated process, there is no set rule applicable from start to end.?But after all, an easy win has never pleased anyone and that’s what marketing is about: working on finding the sweet spot for your business in order to outperform your competitors who are giving up.?