Why your Marketing may not be working

By Marita Greenidge

You’ve been spending lots of money on marketing but for some reason sales are not coming in the door. Why, oh why is your marketing not working? You’ve tried newspaper ads, online ads, you are even trying that “new age” social media stuff, yet nothing!

Don’t despair! You might be making a few mistakes that with some correction will show an improvement to your bottom line.

Here are a few common mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to marketing:

You forget marketing is done to drive sales

You therefore spend way too much time (and money) on the aesthetic aspects of your promotional material than you do on ensuring that material is useful. A fancy flash introduction may look really cool but oftentimes it takes too long to load. Your customers don’t want to wait; they want the information right now. The time your site takes to load, they probably disappeared to another site. Potential sale lost.

With printed brochures one can easily neglect content and focus on eye-catching design. Your brochure is meant to inform the customer, not decorate someone’s table or counter. You want a solid call to action with contact details and an explanation of the benefits your product offers. Your goal is to encourage a sale. (As a side note on brochures, many persons tend to make the mistake of listing product features without a clear link to the benefits for the customer. The customer always wants to know “what’s in it for me?” Don’t forget to answer that question.)

You forgot to define your target market

Locals or tourists, business professionals or doctors, older or younger, sports enthusiasts or gardeners? Who does your product most benefit and what are they reading or watching? If you sell hip, chic, trendy shoes then you probably don’t want to place an ad on 900 AM no matter how cheap the rates are. If you intend to cater to the tourist market then your ad would be better placed on barbados.org or in the Nation Explore magazine than in the regular daily paper. If you’re selling art you probably want to get on Corrie Scott’s blog and online magazine. The idea here is to get your promotional material where your target market has a higher probability of seeing you.

You thought social media was the way to go but forgot it meant being social

Social media is great for building relationships which go a long way in encouraging repeat purchases. You heard this so you set up a Facebook & Twitter page. Unfortunately you forgot that someone needed to monitor the pages and interact regularly with fans and followers. You also forgot that posting interesting stuff frequently could keep fans and followers constantly coming back for more. You lament that you don’t get the big deal with Facebook and Twitter; it’s not working for you.

Facebook and Twitter are great ways to get customer insight for product development. If I were an artist considering launching a new suite of digital reproductions, my fans could let me know if I were on the right track with the pieces chosen. If I were a spice producer, I could give away free recipes that used my spices. When users made the dishes I’d encourage them to share their experience with other fans to incite more sales!

These are just a few reasons you may not be getting the bang for your marketing bucks. Hope this helps place you on a path to rapid sales generation. If not, see me for a consult :-).