Marketing Mistakes – Velocity Media

20 January 2016

Three startup marketing traps to avoid

There is nothing more thrilling than having an idea, bringing it to life and watching customers buy and spread the word. But marketing your startup isn’t always smooth sailing, there are ghastly winds that can blow you right off course. To help here are three startup marketing traps to avoid.

1. Not marketing early enough

While creating a high quality, value-packed product is important, if you don’t have interested customers to buy it, you don’t have a business.

With all of the time, money and energy you spend in product research and development, you want to be in a position to reap the rewards of your hard work as soon as possible. This starts by marketing your product and building your audience early. While you may not have a product to sell, you still have a solution that you can build excitement around.

Visibility, credibility and building relationships with influencers takes time, particularly if you are self-funded and don’t have a large budget to throw at marketing and advertising. Better to invest the time early where you can also get valuable feedback from potential customers, than having to build momentum once your product is ready.

2. Thinking you are the customer

Creating a business idea out of your frustrations, observations and needs is often a winning formula for success. After all, if you have experienced it, chances are, so have others, right? While this inside knowledge into your customers problems, thoughts and behaviour allows you to be more relatable to your customers and make more relevant products, it can also lead you into the trap of thinking you are your customer.

When this happens your ideas, products and marketing become more about what you want, instead of what your customer wants. While you certainly need to take your preferences into consideration, you can’t afford to take your focus off your customers and what they want, or assume they are using your solution for the one problem.

3. Not testing your assumptions

When you go into business, you tend to have an idea of the problem you solve, the people who have it, and the reasons why they want or need it solved. Though more often than not when you start to test the waters you can find that your initial assumptions may not have been as accurate as you thought. It could be that the market who needs your product most doesn’t want it, that your solution solves a bigger problem than you realised, or the motivations to use it are completely different.

I’m working with two startups at the moment who had a very clear idea of who their target market was and their reasoning for it made perfect sense. But after customer interviews and social media market research campaigns, they’ve uncovered an unexpected target market that is more motivated to use their product.

So before you embark on a large scale marketing and public relations campaign to educate the market about your product, let the market educate you first.

Amanda

15 November 2013

Four marketing mistakes that could be costing you big money and business

When done right marketing can generate you thousands of dollars in sales and grow your business to levels you had only dared dream of. But when done wrong, it can be a very costly exercise, not just in wasted spending, but also in lost opportunity and credibility.

To ensure your marketing is effective as possible, here are four of the most common mistakes businesses make regularly that could be costing you money and potential business.

#1 – Not following up

One of the biggest and most expensive mistakes you can make in marketing is to not follow up.

Whether you’ve attended a networking event, sent a sales letter, conducted a meeting or distributed a media release, if you want to increase your marketing results – always follow up.

Not every letter is delivered, not every email is seen, not every business card is kept and not every media release is opened. Following up gives you a second chance to convert the sale or opportunity.

#2 – Not up or cross selling existing customers

The second biggest marketing mistake a business can make is to focus only on bringing in new business instead of utilising their existing customers and database.

These are people who already have a need for your products or services and have seen the value in buying with you or at the very least hearing from you.

While bringing in new business is important, look to up sell, cross sell and generate repeat sales your existing customers and database. They will always be the easiest leads to convert.

#3 – Targeting everyone

The third marketing mistake is to not be clear on your target market. There is no quicker way to waste your marketing dollars than to target anyone and everyone.

To be more strategic with your marketing know who needs your product or service and who has the problems you solve.

Once you know who they are look at their key motivators and influencers. What is most important to them? What keeps them up at night? What do they read? Who do they listen to? Who do they follow on social media? Where do they network?

Start to develop a profile of your audience so you can identify strategies and platforms that will make your marketing more targeted.

#4 – Not establishing your value

The fourth mistake is to not clearly articulate your value and why a customer should come to you above anyone else.

Even the cleverest advertising and most targeted marketing campaigns won’t help you if you can’t establish your value and convert the people you are talking to.

Before you embark on your next marketing campaign or print thousands of brochures, work out your target market’s needs, challenges and frustrations, how you can add value and why you are different to every other person out there offering the same products and services.

Are any of these marketing mistakes costing you business? What can you do today to ensure your marketing is more effective, targeted and profitable?