20 HABITS OF LOUSY MARKETERS, THE

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Nov 2006 by Tehrani, Nadji

On Marketing Blunders...

If you are wondering what triggered this editorial, I would have to answer that there comes a time when I have observed so many marketing problems that if I don't write about them, I will probably explode!

Before I proceed with this column, I would like to make it abundantly clear that the objective of this particular Publisher's Outlook is not to be overly critical or hurt anyone's feelings, but to point out some of the major, costly problems that continue to exist in Corporate America when it comes to marketing.

I would like to quickly review some of the marketing imperatives that I have covered in previous editorials, as follows:

1. The Old Fact: If you don't market, you don't exist;

2. The New Fact: If you are not on the first page of Google or Yahoo, you don't exist;

3. In marketing, timing is everything;

4. As a Professor of Harvard once said, "Companies exist for two reasons: marketing and innovation";

5. Integrated marketing is the only effective way to market today;

6. To stand out from the competition, you must think out of the box; and

7. Marketing is not a part-time job!

Having said that, I would now like to focus on some of the major problems that exist in Corporate America's marketing departments, as follows:

1. Having a full marketing staff without a marketing budget! Believe it or not, there are many companies that have a full staff of marketing people without a dime to spend on marketing! In light of this, you have to wonder how long it will take before these companies go out of business or go nowhere.

2. Spend millions of dollars to develop great new products or services and have no money or budget for marketing!

In previous editorials, I have pointed out that it is not about how good your product is. In today's marketplace, it is how great your marketing is. Even if you have a mediocre product, you can command a great market share if you have powerful marketing.

3. Hire marketing staff that cannot pass a simple marketing test! As I have indicated in previous editorials, better than 98 percent of people who apply for marketing jobs at TMC fail to pass our simple marketing test. On that test, the first question is "define marketing." You would be amazed by how many people with degrees in marketing and years of experience cannot even define marketing!

4. Place a lousy ad in magazines or online and run it over and over again, only to find there are no inquiries or sales leads for that ad. As I have stated many times before, in advertising, like many other parts of business today, the rule is "garbage in, garbage out." When I look through many publications, I rarely find an ad that makes me stop and notice and remember the ad years later. Great ads that remain in the reader's mind permanently are those that produce significant sales results.

5. Ignore the first law of positioning! There are many companies that do not even know what the first law of positioning is! These companies will flounder for a few years with no plans to go anywhere. My favorite expression in this case is from Yogi Berra, the great player for the New York Yankees, who said, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up someplace else!!" Having said that, the first law of positioning reads as follows, "It is better to be first than to be better." Please read this law again. "It is better to be first than to be better." For reasoning behind this comment, I invite you to read past editorials on differentiation and positioning. Before I get away from this first law of positioning, it is important to notice that to be first in anything is like being on the first page of Google, simply because few, if any, people will go beyond the first page when they conduct a search online.

6. Ignore the all-important differentiation. It is vitally important to note that any and all marketing pieces, including all advertisements, must clearly differentiate the advertiser from its competition. In other words, without clearly articulated differentiation, the customer has no reason whatsoever to buy from such advertisers.

7. Ignore Positioning. Once again, it is of paramount importance to define the position of your product or service so that readers and/or customers can understand the nature of your product offering.

8. Ignore Outsourcing. It has been clearly pointed out not only in this editorial, but also in the national business press, that companies would be wise to focus on their core-competency simply because outsourcers such as teleservices companies have a much higher degree of expertise in both sales, customer service, lead generation, collection, fundraising, etc.

9. Ignore thinking out of the box. Given that each person is exposed every week to thousands of commercials, marketing pieces and advertisements, unless you think out of the box and make sure that your product offering stands above the crowd, you will not be noticed and, therefore, you cannot expect proper lead generation.

10. Make sure the marketing manager understands not only your business but also your competitors. No marketing person can survive without industry knowledge and competitive knowledge.