Marketing Nightmares: Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Every business seeks to avoid marketing-related nightmares. Unfortunately, sometimes, marketing your business can involve plenty of disasters that can sink your marketing campaign and harm your business. Ask yourself: What are the biggest marketing mistakes your company can make? How can you avoid these major marketing nightmares?

Chopping Off the Head of Your Marketing Department by Failing to Include Them!

Imagine this scenario: Your sales team develops a new product to make your team more money. They hit the streets immediately, pushing out their brand new service, but they fail to include marketing in their overall efforts. This is a recipe for disaster. 

As Madison Taylor Marketing CEO Aimee Meester says, “Real, effective marketing has the potential to impact more than just brand reputation and lead generation — it can also be strategically leveraged to enhance HR, sales efficacy, and customer success.”

Translation? Marketing has to be a part of every decision of your team, and all products and services must align with your overall marketing message and branding. Otherwise, your team risks leaving out a critical aspect of its business, potentially costing you big time. 

Freakishly Failing To Test!

If you fail to test, you’re preparing to fail. Testing a marketing message is critical to your long-term success. Indeed, paying for a focus group to examine the effectiveness of a marketing campaign – or using A/B testing to see what message is more effective – is a great way to enhance your chances of marketing success.

As the old expression goes, “Don’t know it till you try it.” You may have developed the greatest product or service in the world, but if you don’t test the effectiveness of your marketing and messaging, you’re just guessing. 

Testing means that you take a small piece of your marketing budget and examine the effectiveness of your message and delivery method. With slight alterations, you may determine a more effective message that allows you to better connect with your customers. 

Acting As If Your Customers Don’t Exist On This Mortal Plane!

The long-term history of too many business nightmares involving the collapse of venerable brands is this: They forgot about their customers.

What does this mean? Businesses sometimes focus too hard on secondary goals like innovation, driving profit, or expanding their brand. Your customer relationships and keeping your customers satisfied matter above everything else. You must leave a positive impression about yourself and what you do. Every decision you make – from marketing to new products to expansion efforts – must be made with your customer at the center. 

Frankensteining Your Brand and Messaging!

Keeping your brand and messaging aligned is a requirement for business success. Remember, your brand is so much more than a logo and marketing colors: At its core, your brand is the identity that distinguishes who you are, what you do, and what you sell. 

As such, your brand and your messaging must work in tandem. If you sell luxury products, you aren’t going to advertise affordability. If your product’s driving value is affordability, you can’t advertise it as exclusive. Ensuring brand and marketing alignment allows your business’ marketing message to reinforce the core tenants of your products and services. The two must connect.

Ghosting Your Data!

Data provides an objective source of truth. Indeed, that’s the real beauty of data: It doesn’t care about your feelings or assumptions. When you have a robust method of data collection in place, it can give you invaluable insight, and the analytics you generate can give you invaluable explanations about what works, what doesn’t, and how you can improve your products and services.

That being said, you can collect all the data worldwide. If you don’t collect the right data, and if you don’t analyze it regularly, you’re not getting the most out of your data. This means you must create data collection and review methods that give you the necessary insight. Regular examination of your customer and marketing data and in-depth examinations of relevant metrics can yield invaluable information. 

Having A Website That is Stuck in a Timewarp!

Is having a website all that’s necessary for your business, right? 

No. Your website has to have the right features and be technologically prepared to meet the demands of today. Does your website:

• Take too long to load?
• Not look appropriate on other smart devices, like a tablet or phone?
• Have outdated or dead links?
• Do you have links to your social media or content that you haven’t updated in months or years? 

In that case, it may be time for a new website. Remember, customers have certain expectations when they arrive at your website. They expect speedy loading times, an intuitive design, a mobile-friendly experience, and the ability to find exactly what they want at the speed at which they have become accustomed. Customer attention spans are shrinking, and if your website fails to hold their attention, they will move away. That means a lost marketing opportunity and a lost sale. 

Freaky Final Thoughts!

Marketing nightmares and mistakes come in many shapes and sizes and can affect your business all year round – not just on Halloween. Indeed, the biggest marketing mistakes sometimes come in the least expected ways. Fortunately, by knowing what marketing mistakes to avoid – or at least by hiring someone to help you – you can prevent these scary marketing stories and enjoy marketing success all year round.Looking to end your marketing nightmares? We’ve got you covered. At Madison Taylor Marketing, we have decades of experience helping businesses like yours connect with customers through robust strategy and world-class execution. Connect with us today to find out more.