Author: Ted Nicholas Ted's website: www.tednicholas.com

The Top Seven Marketing Mistakes

In my view, nearly all government statistics about reasons for business failures are nonsense.

Undercapitalization, inexperience, or poor management are usually blamed for all business disasters.

Of course, there can be one or several more causes that result in a business going "belly up."

However, from what I've seen, marketing mistakes are by far primary reason businesses do not survive. This includes companies which consider themselves direct marketers as well as those who do not.

Here are seven most common marketing mistakes:

1. Management treats marketing as a business expense or simply a department rather than a necessary business investment.

Solution: Marketing should be treated as driving force of any company. It is only function that brings in cash. The other major functions in a company are necessary. But they all spend cash. This includes primary business departments of finance, production and research.

To market any product or service successfully, company must do two things:

A. Provide marketing with sufficient resources B. Put marketing at heart of its business strategy

The whole company should be focused on needs and wants of customers and be prepared to satisfy their demands.

Marketing must be part of philosophy of all entrepreneurs and managers.

2. Management does not know specifically what it costs to recruit a new customer. Plus, there are no accurate statistics on average customer lifetime value.

Without this knowledge, it is impossible to make sound decisions. You cannot determine how much to invest in marketing. If you spend more to gain a customer than their lifetime value, ultimately you will go broke. In absence of this information, many businesses can and often do fail. To make matters worse, few of casualties understand why they failed.

Solution: Before you invest large sums on marketing, determine average lifetime value of a customer. An excellent book that I highly recommend on this topic is The Loyalty Factor by Frederick Reicheld.

3. Management makes no attempt to build a customer database. This is especially so with most retailers, restauranteurs and department store owners. However, I've seen this in many other businesses.

Solution: A company's database of customers is potentially its biggest asset. It's much more valuable than equipment, inventory, etc. This is not only true of companies that utilize mail order or Internet marketing. Every single company that wants to survive and prosper needs to build a database.

4. The company does not communicate often enough with its customers. The result is lower sales and profits than are otherwise possible.

Solution: Contact your customers a minimum of once a month. When I started my first business at age 21, I too made many mistakes. The business somehow survived and became a chain of retail confectionery stores called Peterson's House of Fudge. At first I sent my customers an offer every six months. So I tried sending a sales letter every three months. My business doubled. I then began mailing every other month. My business again increased proportionately.

I wound up with ideal and most profitable interval--once a month.

At first I thought contacting customers every 30 days might be too often and that customers would get turned off.

But that didn't happen. I got great feedback as well as higher sales. Providing your customers like, or even love, your product or service, as they should, they want to hear from you frequently.

This, of course, is in context of your sending excellent offers, excellent copy and excellent information.

Indeed, if you are not in frequent contact, your customers will quickly begin to forget about you. Many will start buying from your competitors.

I urge you to contact your customers at least every 30 days (occasionally with special offers a week apart is perfectly fine too).

Your form of contact can be an e-mail, postcard, catalog, telephone call or personal visit. I've found most effective method of regular contact is with a well-written sales letter.

Article Title: Know Thyself and Thy Business Author Name: Joanne Victoria Contact E-mail Address: mailto:joanne@joannevictoria.com Word Count: 483, including signature box Category: Marketing Copyright Date: 2003-04 all rights reserved ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Publishing Guidelines: Thank you for publishing this article in its entirety, including resource box. When possible, please notify me of publication by sending either a website link or a copy of your ezine upon publication via email to mailto:joanne@joannevictoria.com . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Know Thyself and Thy Business

I recently interviewed a prospective client. I asked her to briefly describe what she did. She said it was complicated, she did so many things. I asked who her clients were. She said she couldn't define them, that she dealt with everyone. I then asked how her business was growing and she said she was losing money, clients and had no referrals.

You get picture.

If you can't describe yourself, your ideal client and your business in brief, simple language, how is anyone going to hire you or give you a referral? As an entrepreneur, business owner or independent professional, you need to be able to tell advocates, clients and networking participants what you do, how you do it, who you do it for and why they should choose you.