13.1 Introduction
When you start advertising for your company, or work with marketers, you
must make sure that you are going about it in the right way.
This module will
look at the mistakes that marketers make when they are designing
strategies, and it will teach you to recognise these pitfalls and will provide
you with the solutions.
13.2 Marketing Pitfalls
Marketing is required by any business
that is looking to gain awareness and become successful in a cluttered marketplace.
Therefore, the main aim for businesses is to ensure that everything is on point
and perfectly delivered to the right audience.
However, it is also common for businesses to make mistakes when designing
strategies. Some mistakes do not cause trouble, but some may make their
business suffer in the long run. Mistakes in marketing are also very costly.
Therefore, it is essential for marketers to invest time and energy in research.
They also need to be very careful in designing and implementing new strategies.
Let's take a look at some marketing pitfalls that marketers need to avoid when
designing marketing strategies:
Designing Poor Targeting Strategies
A marketer is responsible for taking a business to the right level by making it
easy for the firm to achieve their goals. One way to do this is to create a
good targeting strategy.
A company that sells scarves cannot target the audience in a tropical location,
and it is the job of a marketer to see whether or not they are targeting the
right audience. They need to conduct extensive research on the product and
audience demographics, and then design strategies that target this audience. The biggest mistake that many marketers make is that they market
the product or service to a universal audience.
Unless the product is perfect for everyone, a marketer cannot target it towards
everyone. Marketers must keep in mind that the brand that they are working with
has a limited budget, and that the brand cannot target a universal audience.
With this in mind, marketers should design a plan that targets only the most
appropriate audience.
By narrowing the marketing efforts, marketers can target the correct audience
in the most effective way. By targeting the right crowd, it becomes easier for
marketers to present their marketing message and make people purchase or take
their desired actions. Furthermore, when marketing messages are presented to a
set number of people, they are more meaningful and successful. This is the best
way to grow a customer base instead of trying to attract everyone in the market.
Focusing on New Customers Only
Many marketers make the mistake of focusing on attracting new customers only.
This, however, is a mistake as you must also make sure your old customers do
not forget about you. As with many things, brand loyalty can be fleeting if not
nurtured.
A brand's success does not come with the number of new customers that they
attract, but the number of old customers that they have. If a brand has an
increased number of loyal customers, it clearly means that the brand is
reputable and cares about its customers. It is an image enhancer and every
marketer should ensure that they are targeting new and old customers with the
same amount of effort.
Therefore, when designing marketing strategies, marketers must keep in mind
that they have two types of audience to impress. A brand's current customers
are its valuable assets, and these assets help to bring more people to a
business.
By developing relationships with current customers, businesses build trust with
them, which in turn, helps them succeed and show an impressive image in the
marketplace.
When current customers get value from a brand, they share their experience with
others and bring in more customers. Therefore, if a marketer wants their marketing
efforts to be successful, they need to make sure that they are targeting old,
current, and new customers, all at the same time.
Heading in All Directions
A marketer has a crucial job on their hands and must design strategies that are
effective, but very targeted. Apart from their audience, marketers must ensure
that their marketing efforts are limited to a few platforms. If a brand is
leading on a television platform, then the marketer should stick to it instead
of targeting more channels and other media, but only as long as it continues to
work.
It is also important for marketers to pick a few platforms and design
strategies to target. If a marketer heads in all directions by targeting
different media at the same time, then they are dividing their money and
efforts in several places. This divided effort could cost them later as these
strategies could fail to make an impact.
Marketing on a platform that is not useful will only end up making you lose
time and money. When a marketer focuses on just a couple of select platforms,
they can dedicate complete time and energy into them, which results in greater
strategies.
Highlighting the Features of Products
and Services
Marketing is not only about reaching the right audience, but it is also about
getting to them in the most attractive way. Many marketers make the mistake of
promoting the features of products and services in their campaigns when
instead, they should highlight the benefits.
Customers want to know how the product or service will help them. Will it make
their life convenient or will it solve a problem? They need to know this
instead of hearing about the manufacturing process. They do not care what you
used; all they care about is the benefit that it offers.
Therefore, when marketers promote the features of a product or service, the
audience does not pay attention. However, if they show them the benefits of the
products and services, the audience is more interested in hearing about them
and would want to give them a try.
A good way to capture audience attention is to tell them how your products and
services are better than competitors, and you should give them a few reasons to
buy your goods or services. Marketers should tell them how the product that
they are presenting is different and what are the unique benefits it offers.
This includes the USP, unique selling point, of the product. Marketers should
aim at making their products and services appear unique instead of focusing on
the features that no one really cares about.
Focusing on Quantity
Marketers who want to make a brand stand out need to keep one thing in mind;
quantity is never above quality. As a famous saying goes: "Quality is
remembered long after the price is forgotten". If a marketer tries to target all the channels using different tactics, then
they are most likely to end up disappointed. For some businesses, going with
quantity works better than quality because they do not have any quality stuff
to present or promote.
When marketers begin to focus on quantity, they miss out quality somewhere in
between. A marketer might be promoting aggressively on multiple platforms, but
it will only make them spend more budget and divide their attention to several
platforms. Unfortunately, this will not get the results that companies are
looking for.
However, if they only focus on a couple of platforms and make it
their aim to design a high quality marketing strategy, then they will be able
to make a solid impact on their audience. Quantity will never leave a lasting
impression on the audience, but quality will. A good promotional event will be
remembered by many for a long time. Similarly, several poor events will only
leave people with a bad experience.
Working Without a Goal
What happens when you start working out without an aim or a goal? You are
unable to practice the right exercises which results in poor results.
Similarly, when it comes to marketing, it is important for marketers to ensure
that they have a goal in mind. Having a goal is essential for everything that
you do. Therefore, if a marketer does not have a clear goal in mind, they will
be moving in all directions, clueless as to what they should really be doing.
A goal enables us to be more precise with our efforts. When we know what we
want to achieve, we can head in the right direction without making any
mistakes. Marketers who do not have a goal in mind end up making bad marketing
decisions, which are not only costly, but bad for their clients. If a marketer wants their strategies to be highly targeted, they
need to ensure that they have a clear goal in mind. They should know what they
want to achieve and then make efforts to gain success.
Marketers are responsible for making a business stand out and achieve success.
Without proper marketing efforts, businesses will be left with few customers
and no awareness. Therefore, in order for marketing to work its wonders,
marketers need to avoid these pitfalls that may cost them a lot of money, time,
and effort.
FACT
It is estimated that, as of 2018, 30% of all Internet users will be using an ad
block.
Source: businessinsider.com
13.3 The Pitfalls of
Advertising
Advertising is a crucial part of marketing, which includes a number of
factors that advertisers need to take care of in order to get goods and
services out to the masses.
An ad is a piece
of information that reaches the target audience and influences their purchase
decisions. If an advertisement is attractive, it will make the audience buy,
and if the ad is overdone, it will only leave a negative image of the brand on
the audience.
This means that
advertisements need to be designed with care. If an advertiser does not give
importance to the marketing goals, then their ads will not have any effect on
the audience. Good adverts attract people towards a brand and make them
purchase. Similarly, a badly made advert will not cause any reaction. Let's
take a look at the common advertising pitfalls that advertisers need to avoid
to design a successful campaign:
Failing to Add a Call to Action
One of the
biggest mistakes that advertisers make is to not add a call to action in
adverts. The purpose of adverts is to make the audience buy products and
services, and if the advertiser forgets to add a CTA, they will end up without
any results.
Imagine, for a
minute, that you are planning a sales event at your retail store. A call to
action is a message that directs the audience towards an action. If you want
more people to be at the sale, you must tell your target audience about the
sale date, time, and the location. If you fail to tell your target audience
these intricate details, they will not come, and it will waste your time and
money.
Calls to action cannot be dull or boring, they need to be
exciting and intriguing. They need to make the audience take an action, and
must be captivating and appealing.
Going Overboard
Advertisements
don't have to be fancy to make an impact on the audience. Sometimes the
simplest adverts leave an everlasting impression on the audience. The thing
that matters is that advertisers need to design ads that are appealing and not
overly done. An ad with too many fonts, colour schemes, and images will fail to
make any impact.
Advertisers need
to ensure that the advertising message is clear and the advert contains all the
necessary elements. An ad does not necessarily have to be fancy, and if the
advertiser has presented the message in an attractive way, more than half of
their job is done. Therefore, overdoing ads only leads to failure because
today's audience wants to see logical and meaningful ads with a great story and
message. If these things are covered, the ad itself becomes a hit.
Going overboard
with advertisements is not limited to just the visual elements. If an
advertiser designs too many advertisements, then they will fail to cause the
impact that they had in mind. Just like marketing, advertising needs to be
highly targeted, and because companies do not have unlimited resources and
budget, advertisers need to carefully design ads keeping in mind the different
elements.
An advertiser
should create only a specific number of ads that deliver their messages
perfectly. Making too many adverts is not only costly, but also often fails to
cause an impact on the audience. Viewers only get affected by an ad when they
are able to memorise it. However, if there are too many ads for one product, the
viewers will not be able to remember them, which will fail to serve the purpose
of advertisement.
Advertisers need
to play with a smart strategy to only design a few good ads instead of many
ordinary ads. When there are few good ads from one brand, the viewers develop a
good image for the brand in their minds.
Failing to Track
Good advertisers
know that every campaign, idea, and effort that they make needs to be
evaluated. Without tracking, the advertiser fails to understand the pitfalls
and strengths of their ad campaign. Therefore, if an advertiser does not track
their advertising campaign, then they will continue to design campaigns with
the same flaws.
When a poor
advert appears on television, the audience expects the brand to do better the
next time around. However, if the advertiser does not evaluate and track the
performance of their ad campaign, they will continue to design similar ads that
were not very popular amongst the audience. Tracking allows advertisers to learn from their mistakes and
develop much refined ad campaigns and strategies that work on the audience and
bring success.
Tracking will
also allow advertisers to see whether their campaigns worked or not. Tracking
results tell the advertiser about the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities
for future campaigns. They will tell advertisers what they missed out on and
what they need to get rid of. They also tell them what they need to continue
using in future ad campaigns.
Advertising needs
to bring more business to the brand, and if it did not, then the advertiser
needs to find out why their advert did not work. This valuable information is
vital for the success of any advertising campaign, and it allows advertisers to
design highly effective and targeted campaigns.
Targeting Everyone
Just as was
mentioned above in the marketing pitfalls section, advertising goals also need
to be precise and highly targeted. If an advertiser targets every prospect,
they will lose their impact, and not every product is made for every person.
Similarly, when it comes to advertising, advertisers need to design ads that
target only those that are more suitable for the product or service that they
are trying to promote.
A lipstick brand,
for example, cannot target everyone because there will be only a small group
that will buy those products. Therefore, targeting the ones who will not be
buying the product is not only useless, but also a waste of money. An
advertising campaign needs to be highly targeted because advertising can cost a
lot. When the message is received by the right people, it results in success.
Focusing on Your Business
Your customers do
not want to know how good you are, but they are interested in knowing the
problems that you can solve. They care less about your business achievements,
and instead want to know what you have got in store for them. Therefore, when
advertisements offer help to the audience, that is when they pay attention to
them and perform the desired action.
Telling your
audience about your business partners and employees is not going to drive
results. Instead, the problems that you solve will help get more sales.
Advertisers should focus on the product's benefits and how it can help the
audience instead of its features. As mentioned, the audience does not care
about the manufacturing process or how many ingredients it has, unless these
ingredients or parts offer a benefit.
When a company
begins to solve customer problems, that is when their ads work best. Therefore,
advertisers need to ensure that the language they use in adverts is focusing on
customers and not the brand. So, when designing ad campaigns, advertisers need
to put their customers first and ensure that the campaign is focused on what
they want, and not what the company wants.
Failing to Design Media Based Ads
Different
advertising media has to be handled in different ways. This means that if an
advertiser is targeting television media, they need to design ads based on the
media itself. Television ads cannot be played on radio, for instance, and vice
versa. This means that when it comes to designing ads, advertisers need to
ensure that they are perfect for the medium they will be put on.
If an advertiser
places a print ad on a billboard, it cannot produce the same results. Because a
billboard ad needs to have little text and attractive visuals, placing a print
ad filled with text is only going to make the advertiser lose money without
achieving any results.
As much as it is
important to design an appealing ad, it is important that it goes on the right
media. This means that advertisers should first know which media they will be
targeting and based on that they should design ads that settle well with each
platform being targeted. In some cases, there can be a slight overlap, such as
a print ad being read on the radio, but in most cases, it is best to design the
ads based on the media on which they will appear.
Module Summary
If done correctly, advertising is quite effective. It can make a brand look its
best, but at the same time, can ruin a brand's reputation beyond measure if
done incorrectly. Therefore, it is important for advertisers to be mindful of
the common advertising pitfalls. The best way to design effective and highly
impactful advertising campaigns is to track the campaigns in the past. Evaluating
past campaigns allows advertisers to learn from mistakes and make use of the
most effective methods to reach out to the target audience.
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