Viva’s Blog: Top 10 marketing mistakes to avoid in 2014

#1: Spending marketing dollars without knowing your “allowable acquisition cost”.
Allowable acquisition cost is how much you can afford to spend to attract a new customer and meet your profit objectives. It starts with calculating the average customer’s lifetime value.

#2: Listening to your friends.
Many of our clients have come to us after spending a lot of money with the wrong advertising agency. Yes, as Nielsen reports, 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising when making a purchase decision. But it’s one thing to rely on a friend’s recommendation when it comes to picking a movie or restaurant. It’s entirely different when you’re looking for an expert to help with your business.

#3: Spending all your time and money designing a website.
“If you build it, they will come” does not apply to websites! Spend more time devising a plan to generate traffic to your site and keep qualified leads there, and less time on the design.

#4: Revising your website without a plan.
What’s the objective of your website? Sell product? Educate customers? Generate leads? Clearly articulate your goal and how you’re going to measure it before you make changes.

#5: Taking your existing customers for granted.
You’ve seen the data. It’s six to seven times more costly to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Are you delighting your customers?

#6: Using the wrong metrics.
Experienced marketers make mistakes, too. If you’ve ever successfully advertised on TV, you know that a key metric is viewership. However, applying that same measurement to your social media efforts can be deadly. The number of fans and followers are often not the optimal yardstick to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

#7: Making your messaging all about you.
Just like we don’t like to hang with people who only talk about themselves, customers will find another option rather then buy from a company with a website that is all about their accomplishments.

#8: Believing you know what is important to your customers.
Objectively listening to and observing your customers is fundamental to your marketing success. It’s not about what you think they want or value. It’s about their perceptions, desires and needs.

#9: Marketing to everyone.
Mass marketing is dead. Try and speak to everyone and you’ll reach no one. Today, consumers have too many choices and too little time. Niche marketing is the most effective way to reach your target. Explicitly define your target market and then develop messaging that’s relevant and meaningful to them.

#10: Ignoring the benefits of public relations.
PR may be the most cost effective use of your marketing dollars. Having a third party toot your horn is a lot more credible then ads paid for by you.

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