Your Marketing Sucks
By Mark Stephens
Marketing that Sucks: We are a wonderful firm composed of wonderful people and we have a wonderful product for wonderful people. Buy us and you’ll feel wonderful, and your life will be wonderful everafter
Most marketing is spending camouflaged as marketing – just money going out the window for little of no company benefit to the bottom line. Every Marketing Dollar spent should bring in more revenue, or more customers, or both. The purpose of marketing is to drive profits. Nothing happens until a sale is made.
Welcome to “Extreme Marketing, which is ROI driven, and emphasizes innovative initiatives, persistence, strategy, and being counter-intuitive.
In the view of Mark Stevens, if your ad agency is applying for awards, fire them. For the most part, ads that build buzz in the creative community do not actually sell, and are a waste of your advertising dollars.
Insight & Ideas to Try
Don’t follow the crowd in your market – differentiate your product and offer something your customers really want.
Hammer on your “Unique Selling Proposition” or what your product or service can do for your prospective customer. Use numerous marketing tools to do so.
Personalize your direct mail pieces, and follow them up. Don’t ask them to call you.
Things like Informercials and Advertorials are actually some of the most effective marketing out there. Techniques like testimonials and adding value work.
“Pick the low hanging fruit” – cross sell to your customers.
Track every marketing stream – use unique 1-800 numbers and web analytics, etc.
Go to extremes to get people to fall in love with your company or product.
Use different marketing channels & public relations to re-enforce the message from different perspectives.
Test ideas and approaches to see which ones will bring in the best return.
NOTE: the web stuff here is pretty basic, and a lot of it is outmoded now, but the underlying premises are sound.
