| Marketing Myth: It’s Not Important to Know What You Don’t Know |
| By Features Editor |
Published
09/4/2006
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Marketing Ideas
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Features Editor
Peanut Butter, our Features Editor and Financial Wizard Wonder Dog selects exceptional articles from around the web to be featured on our website.
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Marketing Myth: It’s Not Important to Know What You Don’t Know pg. 3
It’s like trying to save a few bucks by changing your car’s oil yourself… Now this is not an overly complex task, and one even I can manage. But is it a smart thing to do? Think about what’s involved… you drive to the store; wait in line; ask questions; look at the merchandise; select the oil, pan, funnel; wait in line to check-out; pay the cashier $24.97; drive back home; try to jack up the car so you can get underneath it to put the pan in place; undo the screw; get some oil in the pan; get most of the oil on you; get the funnel and fill it with the new oil; figure out what to do with the old oil; close everything down; throw your oil-laden shirt in the trash; and take a shower. The cost? $24.97 in stuff; $1.32 in gas; $25.00 ruined shirt; 3.25 hours of your time; and $1,000,000 in frustration… All this, when you could have had it done for you for $25.00!!
Lesson learned: Know what’s best left in the hands of professionals. Low cost is not always best cost! Oh, and by the way, never try to hang your own drywall either! Trust me on this one.
However, there are times when doing it yourself is smart! If you’ve got better than average computer skills or design talents it’s easy to create things like business cards, letterhead and bill stuffers… but please, unless you’re an ad buyer by trade, do not buy, book or design any media (especially TV and radio) by yourself! But more about that later…
Classic Symptoms of a Myth #2 Believer They…
• Don’t have a marketing plan because their business, organization, industry, product, service, customers, location, you-name-it is different than anyone else’s and they just don’t need it
• Never seek out wise counsel on most things, more particularly relating to marketing insights
• Make facts fit beliefs
• Base decisions on broad assumptions which may not be true
• Never start with their customers’ needs because they’ve never taken the time to find out what they are
• Conduct little, or no, research on customers, competition, and their marketplace
• Believe that all customers are worth getting, and all are worth keeping
• Don’t differentiate… they don’t understand why very ordinary is very bad
• Latch onto a cool product without understanding the marketplace first
• Buy media from salespeople
• Think people need to be sold (No one wants to be sold anything… but everyone loves to buy something…)
• Reinvent the wheel… Don’t know how, or refuse to, borrow success from others
Mary Eule specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses get and keep profitable customers. Formerly a Fortune 500 marketing executive; founder of two successful small businesses and award-winning speaker, Ms. Eule is President of Strategic Marketing Advisors, LLC. and co-author of a new book, "Mandatory Marketing: Small Business Edition". She has a BA in Journalism/English from the University of Maryland and earned her a master’s degree in marketing from Johns Hopkins University. Log onto her website: http://www.StrategicMarketingAdvisors.com for free articles, newsletter and helpful marketing tools, tips and templates… and/or to purchase the book. |
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