There are 5 Fatal Flaws that can cripple any marketing campaign; social media, advertising, email campaign it doesn’t matter. No matter how good your strategy or your plan – if you do these things – your campaign will not perform. Period. Here they are:
- Lack of a specific target audience – you can’t effectively target everyone. so don’t even try. Pick one target and get the message and delivery right. Remember the saying “it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond…” and so it is with marketing. Better to have the right people actually hear your message than to have a lot of random people maybe hearing it. You’re conversion rates will increase. Which means you will be more successful overall.
- Using a “one-size-fits-all” message – people buy for different reasons, they have different problems they are trying to solve. One generic message won’t get the response rates you’re hoping for. In fact, it can often lead to higher than average bounce rates, abandonment rates or unsubscribes. Not good.
- Assuming that you know which vehicles work for your target audience – you can’t assume that just because you like YouTube, your target audience does to. Or, just because you don’t like to read blogs don’t assume your audience doesn’t like to read blogs. Ask them and find out.
- Not listening – This is probably the single biggest benefit of social media for business – it gives you a direct channel to your customers. For example, let’s say you are chatting in a forum about something and they say “Hey, why did you stop doing X?” You should ask others if they also miss “X” and think about maybe reintroducing it. Someone had provided you valuable insight…the least you can do is listen and think about it.
- Continuing to do the same thing time and time again – it’s easy to find something that works and stick with it. But the world is dynamic, things change and your marketing must change too. Not every day or every week – but often enough to keep folks interested, to leverage new vehicles, new media and new ideas.