what's the biggest marKeting mistake?
Perhaps you’re aware of one of these marketing campaigns, considered in the media as a ‘marketing fail’…
Bic For Her
In 2012, Bic released a line of pens marketed specifically to women. With a pink and purple colour scheme, they used the tagline "Designed to fit a woman's hand." The product was met with widespread ridicule and criticism.
Pepsi's Kendall Jenner Ad
Pepsi released a commercial in 2017 featuring Kendall Jenner. It was widely criticised for trivialising social justice movements. The ad showed Jenner handing a can of Pepsi to a police officer during a protest, seemingly solving all the protesters' problems.
KFC's "Finger Lickin' Good" Campaign
In 2020, KFC suspended its long-standing slogan "It's Finger Lickin' Good" in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Health officials were recommending against touching one's face and promoting good hygiene. Nevertheless, KFC faced backlash for continuing to use the slogan in some of its marketing materials, with many people criticising them for being insensitive given the pandemic's severity.
Day-to-day marketing mistakes
Many marketing mistakes take place day-to-day. Here are a few to give you a flavour …
Lack of market research
Not conducting thorough market research to understand your target audience's needs, preferences, and behaviours, leading to ineffective marketing campaigns and missed opportunities.
Focusing too much on the product and not enough on the customer
Focusing too much on product features making a campaign less appealing to your target audience. Customers care about the benefits a product or service can provide, not just about the product itself.
Overcomplicating the message
Overcomplicated messaging loses customer interest – keep it simple, keep it clear.
Inconsistent messaging
Inconsistent branding and messaging confuses customers and undermines your company’s credibility. Consistent and integrated messaging across all marketing channels is essential for building and customer loyalty and a strong brand identity.
Ignoring customer feedback
Ignoring feedback leads to missed opportunities and negative customer sentiment. Listening to customer feedback is crucial to improving products or services and making better marketing decisions.
Not tracking and analysing results
Failing to track and analyse results leads to missed opportunities for improvement. Measuring your marketing’s success is critical to understanding what works and what doesn't.
…The biggest marketing mistake?
Day-to-day marketing oversights are one thing, but they don’t touch on what I believe to be the biggest marketing mistake.
No marketing strategy
The biggest marketing mistake is the lack of a comprehensive marketing strategy. It may seem a small part of the puzzle when running a small business but you’re at a real disadvantage without one, strategically and day-to-day.
I’ve helped several small businesses and solopreneurs who didn’t have a structured approach to their marketing - they had no marketing strategy.
Some were relying on word-of-mouth referrals, others on sporadic social media posts to promote their products or services.
They had inconsistent messaging and a lack of visibility across their market. They didn’t know which marketing strategies would be the best for them or where to focus their efforts. Most couldn’t tell me who their target audience was – they hadn’t researched their market – and needed help unearthing this as a starter for ten.
Without a clear understanding of your ideal customer, it is a bad use of resource and time focusing on any marketing that won’t resonate with your key customers. Similarly, not knowing your competition means you can’t differentiate yourself from them. Without a unique value proposition or brand identity you’ll be lost in a sea of competitors offering similar products or services.
With no marketing strategy in place, you can’t align your marketing goals and activities with your business objectives. Nor can you outline your top-level campaign activity as you have nothing to hang it from. This provides little to no direction for your team which in turn leads to inconsistent messaging internally and externally.
How do you know if you’re succeeding? What does success look like? Furthermore, what is your vision, mission and values so marketing can synergize and highlight this messaging across campaigns?
I’ve explained this to small businesses in the past before working with them – without a marketing strategy you can’t evaluate your efforts’ success or make strategy-driven decisions about where to invest your resources. Neither can you effectively market your business without clear marketing objectives, direction or messaging.
If you fail to develop and implement a marketing strategy you will struggle to reach new customers and differentiate yourself from your competition. You’ll find it hard to make an impact with your marketing campaigns, build brand awareness and achieve growth. In my experience, it’s the biggest marketing fail.
Get in touch if you’d like help building a marketing strategy and/or support with any day-to-day marketing challenges you have.