Internet Marketing Blog | Jesse Kanclerz | Rochester, NY » mistakes http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/ Marketing advice for running your business. Sun, 18 Apr 2010 01:45:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Top Ten Marketing Mistakes http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/06/top-ten-marketing-mistakes/ http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/06/top-ten-marketing-mistakes/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:00:58 +0000 Jesse http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/06/top-ten-marketing-mistakes/
  • Equating volume with profit. Thus targeting your marketing to the largest audience, but also the one with the narrowest margin, and least loyalty.
  • Assume people already know what differentiates your product or service from the competition. Or worse yet, defining your unique selling proposition in terms of ‘best in class’, ’superior customer service’, or ‘ISO 9000 quality standards.’ In the 21st century these attributes are expected, instead use a story to demonstrate how you deliver on the promise without explicitly stating the obvious.
  • Begin discussions with senior executives at the tactical level. For instance, we should begin a blog because everyone else is doing it, instead of, we need to become transparent with stakeholders and find a way to generate qualitative feedback from customers.
  • Assume that marketing is creative and therefore not accountable. Failing to do extensive tracking and analysis of all marketing programs, increasing spending with initiatives that deliver ROI, while reevaluating ones that do not.
  • Confusing marketing with advertising. Resulting in failure to review the entire customer experience for opportunities to delight. Every touch point, whether it be parking, store layout, the swift resolution of a customer service call, etc, is a way to improve word of mouth and lessen reliance on advertising.
  • Thinking of marketing as a one-way monologue instead of a multiple way communication/interaction with your customers and other stakeholders.
  • Not knowing your customers, or having an ideal customer profile. Being clueless as to their values, and how they engage with your brand.
  • Not taking an integrated approach to communications. Thinking marketing, advertising, and public relations are independent, when really inter-related. Each one has benefits and limitations, but should be focused on accomplishing the same end goal.
  • Forgetting to sync the marketing plan to your organization’s goals, vision, mission and purpose.
  • Limiting yourself to a list of only 10 mistakes. You will likely make hundreds of mis-steps on your journey, your biggest mistake will be failing to learn from them.

    • Thanks to all the bright minds on LinkedIn, who helped me put together this list. Feel free to add your own top marketing mistakes in the comments section.

    ]]>     http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/06/top-ten-marketing-mistakes/feed/ 0     Tasting A Meatball Sundae http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/04/sharing-my-meatball-sundae-with-you/ http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/04/sharing-my-meatball-sundae-with-you/#comments Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:07:45 +0000 Jesse http://www.jessekanclerz.com/blog/2008/04/sharing-my-meatball-sundae-with-you/ This article is a  postmortem examination of my social media experiment. Just to add some context to what follows, I used the Ning platform to create a social portal for my company’s year-long customer travel incentive program – complete with a blog, forum, and individual member profiles.

    Meatball Sundae Explained

    photo courtesy of worth1000 A meatball sundae in social media If you’re familiar with Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae concept, then you understand by the title that this part of the project did not work out. I’ll delve into the why momentarily. First, let me explain the idea for those not familiar with it. Meatballs are your traditional businesses (in my case, plumbing wholesaler). Whereas your ice cream, hot fudge, and sprinkles are all the gooey, web 2.0 stuff, like Myspace, blogs, widgets, etc. Separately both are two great tasting ideas, however when you mix them without forethought you unfortunately end up with a Meatball Sundae.

    While it’s easy to get enamored with the sweet whipped cream and cherries, they should only be used to enhance the products and services underneath. If hype is the driving motivator to use these tools then you’re doomed to failure. Like other mediums, social media should only be used to accomplish a clear goal.

    Answering The Why

    These are my ideas for why this experiment failed to meet my expectations.

    • The platform I used is more suited for building member-centric communities, where the people in the community are the content creators. I set an unrealistic expectation that an older audience of construction contractors, who are busy running their businesses would have the time to generate content for a peripheral event in their lives.
    • Being a year long promotion with an eventual end, there was no motivation for people to contribute. A network aimed at bringing together these professionals for trading ideas to improve their businesses would have faired better.

    What To Do

    What do I want to accomplish for the 2008 promotion? I need to keep our guests informed about the trip, and all the options available to them while being able to gather feedback from them over the course of the year. Since I’ve already established that the particular event combined with the lifestyles of my customers makes a member-centric community unsuitable, I will choose a content driven strategy for the social media part of the promotion.

    The analytics data from the prior program supports my intent.  It’s apparent that those people using the old site relied more so on the forum and blog posts. They crave topical information to help them prepare for the trip, and learn about the activities available in the places they will be visiting.

    The VP Supply Mayan Riviera blog is already putting the content driven strategy into practice.

    Do you have any meatball sundae’s to share?

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