Marketing Should Not Be A Gamble
The paradox with marketing is that everybody spends money marketing their business but with failure rates as high as 75-90% is anyone really succeeding?
This massive turnover and failure rate [read churn] in marketing, advertising, and promotional activities is a sad indictment of the state of marketing and your odds are better in Las Vegas.
Odds Are Better In Vegas
With a 75-90% failure rate your odds are better in Las Vegas:
- Horse Racing 41%
- Blackjack (as usually player) 45%
- Roulette 47%
- Blackjack (perfect strategy and card counting) 50%
- Slots: 68%
Turning Marketing On Its Head
Most of our marketing starts out upside-down from the beginning. Upside down because most marketing campaigns totally ignore the customer because marketers get fixated on creating “results”. You or someone else decides to do some marketing and promotion because, “We need more sales.”
So the first thing most marketers start with is selecting a marketing tool like a magazine ad, building a web site, or sending a special offer to your customer. Never mind the fact that most marketing and advertising forced upon us is boring, recycled, and often just plain stupid.
So what can a business owner to do?
Stop Listening to Advertising Salespeople: the salespersons job is to get the sale. Remember, the last thing that advertising salespeople, executives, and publishers want is for you to actually track results. I know because I had a conversation with an executive who scolded me for encouraging a client to track the response rate. He said, “As long as the client thinks it’s working that is all that matters.”
Expect More: We have been conditioned to accept unreasonable rates of failure in our marketing, advertising, and promotions. I say enough already. With a 75-90% failure your odds are better in Las Vegas plus you would have a lot more fun!
Track Results: create a master list of all your marketing and advertising expenditures. Track the response, revenue generated, and Return-on-Investment.
Upright Marketing = Knowing Your Customer: To upright your marketing start with the customer first, create a ideal customer profile or as I call them a customer “persona”.
I am not suggesting that people can be duped, conned, or should be taken advantage of - rather I am suggesting that developing a Persona of your ideal customer will help you gain a greater understanding of what “makes them tick”.
Anything we can do to get outside of our heads and gain a more objective viewpoint can only help guide your marketing, advertising, and promotional decision making. That is why I have developed a set of Personas to help zero in on customer needs.
Understand Your Customers’ Persona
Over at Gateway Blogging I started writing about customer Personas. What I talk about is really understanding the personality, characteristics, drivers, and behaviors that shape how your customers make a decision to buy your products and services. You can read a sample persona here.
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