I'm gonna share five familiar marketing problems with you that could be hurting
your business. Avoid just one of these and your business will grow. But avoid all
five of these marketing mishaps and there's no telling just how much more
profitable and effective all of your marketing will be from this day forward.
So let's get to it!
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart, marketing strategist and welcome to the
channel. The #1 place for entrepreneurs to learn proven marketing
strategies to help you grow your business online. Marketing is the single
most important element to your business success. But it's also a minefield of
potential problems and pitfalls and all sorts of disasters that can make your
marketing not only not effective but also could potentially hurt your brand
and damage your business and lose you a whole lot of money and I don't want that
for you. And that's why I've put together this list of some of the most common
mistakes that I see business owners and entrepreneurs making on a nearly daily
basis. So you can avoid these and instead, replace them with proven and effective
and really solid marketing strategies that will drive your business forward and
help you generate more leads, more customers, more sales and more revenue.
So let's dive in and it all starts with mistake #1 having, what I call, a
mega market. I see this mostly among newer business owners or people who are
just getting into marketing. When I ask them to tell me or to describe who their
ideal target market is they tell me things like: everyone or people with
money. Here's the deal, everyone is not a target market.
Everyone is everyone and if we're talking about everyone it's billions and
billions of people. The reality is, is that most of them aren't gonna buy from
you, most of them don't want to buy from you and maybe more importantly, you don't
want to sell to most people, you don't want to sell to everyone because they're
not going to be the right fit for your business, for your brand, for your goals
and for the direction you want your company to go. This is why having a mega
market, trying to appeal to everyone and really just not niching down and really
focusing in on that perfect customer that you can serve is one of the biggest
mistakes you can make because when you do this, when you become so broad and so
bland and so boring, because you're going to have to in order to appeal to
everyone, not offend anyone or not polarize anybody well you end up
appealing to nobody. The alternative then to having a mega market is to having a
very specific market, really defining and identifying and clarifying
who your ideal target market is, that ideal customer avatar or "I.C.A" Essentially
a representation of that perfect customer that you absolutely love and
more importantly, who loves you and loves what you do and is happy to pay you for
the value you provide. The better that you're able to clearly identify an ideal
customer avatar well the better all of your marketing is going to be from this
day forward. Because it's going to enable you to come up with messages and offers
and essentially all of your marketing materials are going to be that much more
effective because they're going to be relatable and specific and essentially
it's going to make your ideal customer avatar feel like you're marketing
directly to them. Like your business is going to be that main solution that
perfect solution to the problems that they're currently experiencing. But
you're not gonna be able to do that if you're trying to appeal to everyone
because everyone's got a whole lot of problems you're much better off to be
specific to focus in on that perfect person and their unique problems. There's
an expression in marketing that says "Whoever understands the customer best wins"
and this is absolutely true. But you're not gonna be able to understand
everyone. People are complicated. Alright let's move on to the next
mistake, which is all about having what I call ordinary offers. Now, an ordinary
offer is the opposite of what is incredibly important to have in your
business which is an irresistible offer. I see this a lot with new business
owners and with experienced business owners, especially when they start
getting into things like advertising, whether we're talking about Facebook ads
or Instagram ads or YouTube ads or Google ads, basically any kind of ad.
What normally happens is the entrepreneur will launch a series of ads. They'll
create Facebook ads or Instagram ads or whatever, they'll go out there, they'll
spend a ton of money and nothing will happen. What inevitably follows from that
is blaming the ad network, saying things like "Facebook ads don't work" or
"Instagram ads are a waste of money" when the reality is is it's not the platform
and in fact it's probably not even the message that you wrote or the image that
you used or the video or anything like that, more often than not, it's the offer.
Essentially not presenting something to someone in a way that's irresistible, in
a way that compels them to action, in a way that makes them have to buy or have
to take action on whatever it is that you're presenting to them. When this
happens well it normally boils down to one of two different things.
#1 is you're trying to sell them something that they just don't want.
The reality is is that the market never lies. So if you're going out there and
you're trying to promote something and people just aren't buying it may just be
because they just don't want it. If however, you've been in business for any
length of time and you know that you provide a good service, you know that
people want it well it leads us to the second point, which is that whatever
you're presenting just isn't being presented in a way that compels them to
action. Essentially it's a marketing problem. It's not that people don't want
it it's just that the way that you're packaging it, the way that you're
presenting it and the way that you're putting it out there to the world well
it just isn't irresistible enough so it's way too easy for people to say
maybe or no or maybe I'll get that later, if at all. The beauty here is the
solution really brings us back to mistake number one, which is being clear
on who it is that you're trying to serve because when you're able to deep dive
into that ideal customer avatar, when you're able to really uncover their
problems and their pains and their frustrations well you're able to craft
an irresistible offer because you're simply going to be solving a problem
that they already have. Really is that simple. Alright the next mistake is all
about having flimsy marketing. Now if you've got a Twitter account linked up
on your website that hasn't been posted to since 2016 or heaven forbid a Google+
account, which that's right they're gone now, well then you my friend are a victim
of flimsy marketing. Flimsy marketing is essentially the result or the outcome of
spreading yourself way too thin across way too many different marketing
platforms or social media networks or any marketing opportunity available.
There's a lot of them. Flimsy marketing is often the result of a business owner
or entrepreneur who's heard the advice that you need to be everywhere and you
need to do everything and the reality is this just isn't the case. First of all,
even the thought of trying to be everywhere and trying to do everything
is completely unrealistic. That's an overwhelming amount of work, not to
mention it's just not effective because that ideal customer avatar,
remember that main person that you're trying to serve, well they're not
everywhere, they're not doing everything, rather they're focused in on 1, 2
maybe 3 specific channels. So it only makes sense then to identify that and go
there and ignore everything else. When you do this, rather than spreading
yourself way too thin across of different channels and platforms and
options, you're able to go deep and you're able to really connect with your
customers on a more personal and more intimate level by showing up again and
again where they are and on networks and on platforms they actually care about
and they actually use. Alright let's move on to the next mistake which is none
other than random acts of marketing. And this my friend, may be the most common
mistake of them all. Essentially, random acts of marketing is having no plan, no
strategy, no real thought into what you're doing and just doing marketing
for marketing sake because you believe you have to and because you were told to.
I work with a lot of businesses at this stage, even at the multi six, the seven
even the 8 figure level where they're just doing marketing for the sake of
doing marketing. Some of its working, most of it isn't but they're not really sure
what or why or even where. Their response to marketing typically before we start
working together is really reactive, essentially they get presented with a
marketing opportunity, looks like a decent one, don't really know but they
test it out and then when all is said and done they're not even really sure if
it worked. And this is why marketing gets such a
bad name, such a bad reputation. Well essentially it's because there's no
clear strategy, there's no clearly defined plan and there's no real set
path in order to get the results that you're after. Unsurprisingly, random acts
of marketing doesn't tend to work all that well. It's kind of like being
blindfolded and playing darts and trying to hit a bull's eye it's pretty much not
gonna happen. And even if it did happen well it'd be like trying to do it again
and then again and again which is the point of marketing after all. After all,
it doesn't really make sense to go out there and have just one homerun
marketing campaign if you're unable to replicate it or duplicate it or do it
again, for all that just really comes down to luck. You can't build a business
on luck. For marketing to be really effective you need to know what worked
and what didn't so you can do more of what worked and
less of what didn't. This is why it's so incredibly important to sit down ahead
of time and really map out a plan and a strategy. Include things like: who's my
ideal target market, what are their biggest pains, problems, frustrations and
all the things that try to move away from, how is my business uniquely
positioned to solve their pains and problems for them, where is my ideal
target market active and present online maybe even offline and what are the kind
of offers or content that I could put in front of them that would resonate and be
relatable and inspire them to take action.
Answering those few short questions alone will put you miles ahead of your
competition. But that's not enough, which leads me to my next point:
Ignorance is not bliss. In the world of business and marketing what you don't
know will hurt you. Now I appreciate when it comes to business, when it comes to
your market and your industry and all of the nuances around it well there's a lot
to know and I appreciate that maybe you can't know everything but knowing
marketing this is gonna be one of those main things you really need to try to
get your head around and really try to grasp. This is because marketing is the
single most important element to your business's success. After all it's
marketing's job to go out there and help you attract new clients, new customers,
new leads, new sales and without those you don't have a business. So where do
you start, what can you do right now to get a better understanding of marketing
and essentially the most important fundamentals and principles that'll
really drive your business and your revenue forward. Well the best place to
start is to check out the video I have linked up right here on introduction to
marketing. So make sure to check that out now and I'll see you in the next episode