Do you make these common marketing mistakes?

As the CEO of a marketing firm and a marketing copywriter, I see horrible marketing every day. Here are the 3 most common mistakes I see businesses make with their marketing which causes their marketing to fail.

Marketing mistake 1: Not focusing on a niche market that really needs and wants what you are selling. To be successful in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, you absolutely must focus your marketing on serving a specialized niche market. This is especially true and a matter of survival if you have a small marketing budget. If you ignore this advice and try to market to a large general market before first becoming the market leader in at least one or two small niche markets, I can guarantee that you will go broke and then go out of business. However, if you do decide to focus on serving a small niche market, you greatly increase your odds for business success with far less financial risk.

Marketing mistake 2: Focusing on features instead of benefits. A feature explains a fact about what a product does such as a specification. For example, the new ZZ car has anti-lock brakes. That is a fact about the car - it has anti-lock brakes. The problem with only listing a feature is that a feature does not explain how it benefits a person. Why would you want a car with anti-lock brakes? The answer to that question is the benefit. Anti-lock brakes are much safer because they keep your tires from locking up and skidding so you do not lose control of your car. Therefore, if you drive a car that has anti-lock brakes, you are less likely to be in a car accident and killed. The benefit is the positive end result. People buy benefits, not features. Therefore, in your marketing, you absolutely must focus on benefits instead of features. The more powerful you can make your benefits, the more successful your marketing will be.

Marketing mistake 3: Not marketing on a consistent basis. At any given time, a market will only have about 1-3% of its population interested in buying your product or service. For example, let’s say you are a home remodeling contractor and you meet with 100 home owners. On any given day only about 1-3 people may be interested in buying your home remodeling services. That means up to 99% will not be interested in buying your product or service right now. However, in a week, a month, or a year, they may be ready to buy because their needs have changed. If you are only doing your marketing on a one-time basis, you are missing out on 99% of the market that may buy from you in the future. That is why you must consistently market to your target market month after month forever. If you are going to market with sales letters, send out sales letters to your contact list every single month. Many of your prospects may have to receive your sales letter 6-12 times or more before they will be ready to buy from you. If you advertise in a trade publication, advertise every single month. Many people will need to see your advertisement over the course of several months (or years) before they will be in the market to buy from you. If you advertise on the radio, don’t run your ads for a month and stop. Keep running them month after month. Think of marketing as out of sight, out of mind. If you are not constantly marketing to your marketplace so your name and the benefits of your product or service is in fresh in their minds, they will forget about you very quickly and buy from the company that is consistently marketing to them.

If you follow the advice given in this article I guarantee you will quickly see an increase in the success of your marketing program and your business will grow and prosper.

To Your Business Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Advertising Agency
"We don't help you compete, we help you dominate"
http://www.geisheker.com
(920) 471-1638

Do You Make These Common Internet Marketing Mistakes?

I have been involved in Internet marketing since the world-wide-web began and I consider myself to be an Internet marketing expert. From my experience helping clients build successful websites, I have learned what works and what does not work when selling on the Internet. To help you avoid costly mistakes, I have listed what I have found to be the biggest Internet marketing mistakes.

Mistake 1: Using Flash. If your website is one big Flash presentation, you are making a huge mistake! Why? Because consumers go to your website to seek information, not to watch a "I'm so cool" Flash presentation. Ask yourself, when you go to a website, do you sit there and watch their ego-building Flash presentation or do you click the "skip flash" link to get to the real information?

Another major problem with Flash is that it is only "interesting" the first time a visitor goes to your website. If they actually return to your website, they will do everything they can to skip your Flash presentation so they can quickly get to the information they want. In my experience NOTHING kills Internet sales more than Flash. That is why you almost never see the world's top websites like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo using Flash as the basis for their web pages. If you are making this mistake, get rid of the Flash immediately and make your website a valuable source of information, because that is what consumers want.

Mistake 2: Letting your webmaster write the text for your website. This is another huge mistake that companies make. On nearly a daily basis I get a call from a company that has spent a fortune building a website and they cannot understand why they are not generating any sales. My first question is, who wrote the text for your website? In nearly every case they tell me their webmaster wrote it.

Why is it a mistake to have your webmaster write your website marketing text? Here is a hint-- webmasters are programmers, NOT marketing professional who know how to write text that sells. If you want your website to generate sales, you must hire a person who is an excellent copywriter and knows how to write words that make people want to buy! Would you hire your webmaster to write a display advertisement for you? Of course not! Then why on earth would you allow them to write the text for your website? By having your webmaster write the text for your website, you are ensuring your website will be an awful sales tool. To solve this problem, hire a marketing professional to write the text for your website. We at the Geisheker Group specialize in writing powerful marketing text for websites. For a free no-obligation quote, call us at (920) 592-9595.

Mistake 3: Making your website hard to navigate. Have you ever been to a website where you have to click on various generic graphics or parts of a flash picture to try and find a link to the information you are looking for? Why on earth do companies do this? It is not fun, it is not clever, it is STUPID AND ANNOYING! When designing your website's navigation (links to information) use the acronym K.I.S.S., which stands for KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! Simple sells. Complex does not. If your webmaster tries to sell you on using parts of a Flash picture for links or some other complex navigation system, FIRE THEM IMMEDIATELY!

Mistake 4: Not having a telephone number on your website. People rarely trust companies that do not have a telephone number. I certainly don't. If I am considering buying a product from a website and they do not have a telephone number, I don't buy. And I know others feel the same way. For example, I have had several clients hire me because I had a telephone number on my website and the other marketing consultant websites they were looking at did not. Therefore, if you want customers to buy from you, make it easy for them to contact you by having a telephone number on your website. In fact, you should have your telephone number on EVERY page of your website.

By following these recommendations, your website will be a far more valuable sales and marketing tool.

To Your Success!

Peter Geisheker, CEO
The Geisheker Group Advertising Agency
(920) 471-1638