What every business ought to know about marketing

The 3 ways businesses literally throw money down the drain with marketing – and how to avoid them

Marketing is a strange animal. Just like an untamed horse, it can treat you very nice, get you great results and business opportunities – or on the other hand throw you off track completely, getting absolutely no results or even worse: bad feedback from the market - often without giving you any clues as to why.

John Wanamaker (American merchant and considered a "pioneer in marketing") said over 100 years ago:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

So how can you turn the odds in your favor?

By making sure you avoid the following 3 marketing traps:

No 1: Super broad marketing:

When you are casting a very wide net and trying to catch as many new business opportunities as possible, quite often the opposite happens, and you find that all the “fish” escape thru the holes of the big wide net. Or in other words: When your marketing is trying to address many different issues, problems and does not have a clearly defined niche, it simply does not work because no one will feel directly spoken to.

For example: Selling shoes to women as a marketing message will not work. Why? Because the message depends on the age, budget, lifestyle, often education and the preferred design or shoe style, and also the intended use of the shoes.

Selling beautiful colorful waterproof rubber boots with a removable liner for both summer and winter use to ladies who are often outside, and own horses or dogs would be a much more focused message and most likely be landing with the audience.

No 2: Not knowing and addressing your niche’s pain points:

The 2 reasons why people buy are pain and gain. Pain or solving problems generally sells better than gain - for some reason human beings are just wired that way. If businesses miss out on this big emotional driver in their marketing because they simply don’t know their market’s pain points very well, recommended best practice is to find out in form of surveys (works okay-ish) or better yet by talking to potential customers. (See how to address pain points on a sales page here: https://www.coaching-business-academy.com/pmp)

No 3: No compelling offer:

The marketplace is getting noisier and busier literally by the minute, as more and more businesses are trying to sell their offers – and more and more copy-cats are starting a me-too business. That’s why having a super attractive, compelling offer (and not just something everybody has) is key to running great marketing campaigns.

When a famous marketer was once asked how he can manage to make over 90 % of his campaigns super successful he replied dryly:

“It’s quite simple really: I only bet on the fastest horse.”

– meaning he recognized a compelling offer when he saw it and chose to work only with clients who had one. (See the steps of creating a compelling offer here: https://www.coaching-business-academy.com/ipl)

In short: Marketing that works is Clear, Concise & Compelling.

Apply this to your Marketing and you WILL turn the Odds in your favor.