Marketing hindsight

[LJatSpear]

Morning (again)

If you knew then, what you know now, would you have spent your marketing budget differently?

Did you get it right first time?


thanks

 

[CraigieDD]

I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone that got it right first time.

But...

I'd have done more testing and measuring when I started out.
I'd nail down every lead, enquiry and sale so I knew exactly what was working.
I'd have hired better people earlier.

 

[Bri]

May have a taker here

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=171528

 

[Kimberly Mears]

The mistake I see made most often is the hire of a junior sales person (straight out of college) as employee number 1 before a marketing plan has been thrashed out.

People with a new product or service are cash strapped and figure a full-time less experienced person is better than none at all or half-time of a more experienced closer. The new grad generally struggles without the support of the founder (because the founder is often overcommitted) and ultimately leaves along with all the knowledge and contacts they've gleaned--setting the company back.

Admittedly, there are instances that this scenario could work. But it would take a very special new grad to make it happen.

 

[Call Tracker]

With proper analytics in place you can test your campaigns and track the leads that come through. Set up a call tracking telephone number that you add to direct mail, email marketing, your website or ppc, (to name a few), for as a little as £10 a month and you can see all the calls made to that number. Spend a bit more and you can listen to the calls to see if your sales team are handling them in the right way.

If you want to monitor visitors to your website that have picked up the telephone then that can be done using website call tracking. If you get all your monitoring in place, you can take the risk out of marketing and use the intelligence you get from tracking to make improvements along the way.

 

[S-Marketing]

Morning (again)

If you knew then, what you know now, would you have spent your marketing budget differently?

Did you get it right first time?


thanks

In my experience (as the best marketing consultant on the forum) I would say that the biggest mistake people make is not really thinking about what marketing is. Probably 75% of new clients think that marketing is all about advertising. A few understand the principles a bit more and include research as part of their marketing strategy.

My first job is always to convince them that marketing should be used from the ground up, in any business. Such things as product selection, product development, selection of staff, targeting, web design, and even such things as selection of equipment can all be most successfully thought of from a marketing perspective. Anything you do in your business, that effects your customers or potential customers, is worth considering from a marketing perspective.

If more people knew this, they wouldn't even need to think about the expensive nonsense often passed off as marketing.

 

[ooh]

I'd say the #1 mistake people make in their marketing is not making it for the right/best people. Not knowing who that is. Making it for the wrong people (often, shockingly, they make it for themselves).

Also, taking what Stretchy said ("Anything you do in your business, that effects your customers or potential customers, is worth considering from a marketing perspective.") a bit further, considering/embedding marketing within pretty much all business decisions from the outset, throughout the entire business; integrated, being part of. Marketing is often far too a surface after thought. It needs to be thoroughly part of it. A, if not the, main driver.

 

[Kernowman]

In my experience (as the best marketing consultant on the forum) I would say that the biggest mistake people make is not really thinking about what marketing is. Probably 75% of new clients think that marketing is all about advertising. A few understand the principles a bit more and include research as part of their marketing strategy.

My first job is always to convince them that marketing should be used from the ground up, in any business. Such things as product selection, product development, selection of staff, targeting, web design, and even such things as selection of equipment can all be most successfully thought of from a marketing perspective. Anything you do in your business, that effects your customers or potential customers, is worth considering from a marketing perspective.

If more people knew this, they wouldn't even need to think about the expensive nonsense often passed off as marketing.

As I seem to rank only as the SECOND BEST marketing consultant on here, I would go further than your comment by saying that true grass roots Marketing is being leapfrogged entirely and the focus in now purely on the concept and straight into the sales process, be that by flyers, email, website, telesales or a note tied to a brick thrown through a window. Judging by the number of posts on this forum alone which are saying things not unlike "My website isn't getting the hits" or "I need more sales" is evidence enough the Marketing phase in it's true sense, was bypassed.

All the search engine optimisation and PPI in the world isn't going to remedy a poorly conceived and formulated product that does NOT connect with it's target audience, at the right price, at the right quality and has tangible benefits associated.

My personal pet hate at the moment is use of the word "Telemarketing" which in my view is one of those monsters created by someone who knows no better. Maybe it's because the word "Telesales" had/has such a negative perception that a name change away from that would be the answer to regain respectability. No.