Avoid These Mistakes in Your Marketing Messages

Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.

- Seth Godin

Make marketing mistakes? We have all made mistakes with our marketing messages. The key is to realize you have made them so as to learn and not repeat them. As you engage customers, avoid these six potential mistakes and take these corrective steps instead:

Use a single communication channel

Today there are many channels that your customers use to learn about potential businesses. Therefore, it is best not to rely on a single channel.

Recommendation: Don’t leave your old channel; just add new ones over time. Try new message styles to match up with the new channels. In all messages, rely on what you know about your customers to engage. Remember to integrate the messages and channels.

Ignore your competitors

Ignore finding REAL differences with competitors. This usually means you don’t understand your customer needs or what your competitors are doing.

Recommendation: Make your value proposition priority one in your marketing. Hands down. To define your value propositions, listen to your customers first and watch your competitors second.

Being repetitious

Using the same marketing messages over and over. Boring.

Recommendation: Invent new ways to deliver messages on your products and services. Be daring, bold and creative with messages to customers. Invent new ways to deliver messages on your products and services.

Being irrelevant and non-useful

Provide marketing messages that are not relevant or useful to your customers. Remember people don’t read marketing copy. They read what interests them and provides value.

Recommendation: Your customers’ time is priceless … make your messages something that will interest them. Don’t waste their time with irrelevant, weak messages.

Being non-social

Your focus is on everything but being friendly and social. You frequently act as if you don’t care.

Recommendation: Spend more time with building customer relationships than marketing. Customer relationships are critical as they build trust in you and your business. Trust is the main reason your customers select your business over your competitors.

Ignoring a call to action

When you ignore what action you will take for the customer, you give the customer no reason to remember you.

Recommendation: The call to action is the most important factor. It is what you leave behind value when the engagement is ending. Every engagement should end with an action … focus on something positive you will do for the customer.

An important fact to remember … customers create the most value for you when you create the most value for them.

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of a small business. Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Quora, and LinkedIn