Top 5 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid - like plague...
In our interactions with IT companies, big and small, we have found some common misconceptions about the role and impact of marketing, as well as flawed thinking on the applicability to companies in various stages of evolution. This article attempts to abstract the top five mistakes that technology marketers make, and suggest ways to avoid these pitfalls.
Equating Sales with Marketing
Probably the most common mistake committed by emerging companies in particular is the inability to differentiate between the function of sales and marketing. Nine out of ten companies we meet believe that lead generation is marketing, and is the only relevant initiative for a small company. Wrong on both counts! Lead generation is a sales support activity and there is a lot more that an emerging company can do in marketing.
Symptoms-
In our interactions with IT companies, big and small, we have found some common misconceptions about the role and impact of marketing, as well as flawed thinking on the applicability to companies in various stages of evolution. This article attempts to abstract the top five mistakes that technology marketers make, and suggest ways to avoid these pitfalls.
Equating Sales with Marketing
Probably the most common mistake committed by emerging companies in particular is the inability to differentiate between the function of sales and marketing. Nine out of ten companies we meet believe that lead generation is marketing, and is the only relevant initiative for a small company. Wrong on both counts! Lead generation is a sales support activity and there is a lot more that an emerging company can do in marketing.
Symptoms-
- You measure all programs against one metric - how much is sold, especially in the short term
- You overemphasize the impact of price in your customer's buying decision
Lack of focus on creating market pull through branding programs, and using only push tactics may neither give the "desired" increase in sales nor will it build company or product recall. Pressure to increase sales without the accompanying brand programs invariably leads to overuse of price as a differentiator, which results in commoditization of your product or service.
Focusing solely on sales also puts blinkers in your thinking and there is no focus on market building activity. Also, a few quick wins may not necessarily imply long-term predictability and business success.
Remedies
- Make a conscious effort to design and implement marketing programs that -
- will help your brand two years down the line
- will highlight/showcase your differentiators and set you apart from competition
- are in line with the long-term plans that you have for your brand
- Allocate a sizable percentage of resources (time, effort and money), while drawing up your annual marketing plan, to programs that have long-term impact. These will necessarily be marketing programs rather than sales initiatives
Strangely, some emerging companies we meet derive a false sense of security by remaining internally focused and believing that their product or service is beyond compare in the market. This is seldom the case, and such an outlook can leave you unprepared when you hit the market.
Symptoms
- At prospect meetings, you find out that your competitors have better recall, or have been there before you
- Internally, your reviews on product or service performance do not consider competition analysis; technical teams assert that the product is peerless
Unpleasant surprises are dangerous as they may trigger unplanned off-the-cuff reactions from you. Since competition is a factor outside your circle of influence, the importance of keeping an accurate tab on them cannot be overemphasized. Finding out in the eleventh hour, example, in the final stages of a prospecting cycle, about a competitor you do not understand well enough can lead to knee-jerk reactions from your end.
Mapping and tracking competition is also a good way to stay in touch with customer needs, as one can assume that product and service innovations and improvements happen in consonance with market needs. Thus, a lack of knowledge of competition activity is also indicative of incomplete customer and marketing understanding.
Remedies
- Have a pulse of the market, track competition continuously (and stealthily of course)
- Pretend to be your main competitor for half an hour daily. Think from his perspective
- Do a SWOT of your company and rivals quarterly. Share it with your sales/market- facing team (This team has the highest propensity to inflate competitor strengths and hence is suited to this exercise)
- Convince your sales team to feedback field information into the competition tracking process
Firm-hosted user communities are an effective way to respond to customers while simultaneously using the interaction to create a knowledge pool for other users. Even in independent user-communities, more experienced users help new users by answering their queries and sharing knowledge. This user-to-user servicing takes a significant burden off the post-sales support systems of the company and reduces their workload to a significant extent.
Over estimating competition
This thinking, also equally prevalent, is equally unnecessary. Typically owing to lack of confidence in their own product, and the wrong notion that an established product is the "perfect" product, emerging companies view market activities with needless trepidation that reflects in the defensive strategies they carve out.
Symptoms
- Your sales team adduces the reason they are unable to make headway is because the "other" company is way too strong
- Your sales and marketing teams show lack of confidence in your product or service and are unable to convince themselves of why your customer should like your product