The field of marketing is one that is ever-changing, so it takes a lot of effort to keep up with it. Marketing professionals know how important their field is to the overall success of a business; a company can’t survive long without a marketing plan. However, it’s not just having a marketing plan—it’s having an effective marketing plan that will help your business grow. To facilitate more useful marketing plans, we’ve compiled some marketing pitfalls your company needs to avoid if you’d like to succeed.
Not Testing Enough
Research and testing are crucial elements to knowing how to move forward with your marketing plan. You can’t have a successful product launch or business venture without doing proper market research first. This market research will help you decide what works and what doesn’t when it comes to your target audience. Going off the cuff without any market testing is much riskier and could result in a lot of wasted time and money.
Having the Wrong Voice
Your marketing efforts will all be for naught if your message doesn’t match the target audience. Trying to position your company as something it isn’t will only confuse customers and drive them to competitors instead. This is all about understanding your target audience. If your audience is middle-aged men, for instance, marketing peppered with teenage lingo won’t land well.
Only Marketing To New Customers
Marketing campaigns tend to focus extensively on the acquisition of new customers. There’s nothing wrong with this approach but forgetting your current and loyal customers in the process is like shooting yourself in the foot. Expanding your target audience is understandable; however, favoring this new audience over the loyal customers you already have will eat into your profits when they feel like you’ve moved on from them.
Not Differentiating Enough
All marketing is focused on differentiating your business or product from the competition. If you don’t know what makes you different from the competition, figuring that out is your number one priority. This requires careful consideration of your competition, as well as an understanding of what your target audience is looking for. If you aren’t different enough from your competitors, no one will bother giving your company a try when there is already a company they trust in the market.
Hopefully, seeing all these marketing pitfalls your company needs to avoid has made you more aware of the challenges you face as a business. CGS Premier makes experiential marketing vehicles for people who know how they want to position themselves in their market. When you decide to take your marketing plans to the next level, give us a call.
