5 common marketing mistakes!

If you are a marketing planner, don’t you hope that the activities you plan can be a hit?

If you are the head of a business, do you hope to better enable your business to grow through a certain activity?

The answer is definitely that we hope to achieve the most effective input-output ratio for marketing activities . But in fact, most people’s marketing activities fail to achieve the desired results, or are even ineffective.

Why?

There are many reasons, whether it is the activity strategy, specific execution, or funding, etc., which may affect the final effect.

However, many people who do marketing have a wrong perception – they think that if a marketing plan is very creative, it will definitely be a hit. However, popular activities and cases are always in the minority, and there are even fewer cases that can become a hot topic on the entire Internet. What we often see are the results of magnifying individual cases, which leads many people to have misunderstandings and extreme cognitions - either they think it is easy to create a screen-sweeping event, or they feel they are not suitable for marketing.

(Photo: New World 's book-throwing campaign)

In fact, this case effect is the result of the influence of many factors. For example: the delivery channel , activity content, activated users, delivery time, industry attributes, etc. Although it is impossible for us to achieve phenomenal and successful results in every case, we can at least increase the effect of marketing success and reduce the probability of marketing failure by avoiding some mistakes.

Today I will only summarize the marketing activities themselves and look at some mistakes that many of our marketing planners or business people often make.

This article lists 5 mistakes that often cause marketing campaigns to fail/be ineffective. See if you have made any of them.

1. Investing heavily without testing can easily lead to ineffective marketing activities

This is the mistake most people make, including me.

For example, some people write a simple copy and then directly release it without any testing. This practice can easily lead to no effect and waste of advertising costs. This is the mistake we often make of releasing a large number of copies without testing, and it is also one of the main reasons why many people often fail in marketing.

Even the most experienced marketers cannot guarantee that a marketing plan will eventually produce the desired results. As I said before, there are many factors that influence the success of a marketing campaign, and each factor is a variable that affects the results.

For example: When the well-known marketer Yang Fei (CMO of Luckin Coffee ) shared an advertising poster they made for a Shenzhou loan product, the poster ultimately brought a very high conversion rate . Some people wonder why a poster can bring such a high conversion rate. In fact, this is the result of continuous small-scale testing and continuous optimization.

From left to right below, after multiple tests, we found that the fourth one had the highest conversion rate, and then we launched it in large quantities.

For example, when we were doing a fission growth campaign for an offline restaurant before, we did not launch it on a large scale immediately after the plan came out. Instead, we conducted a small-scale test - testing user feedback, whether there were any problems with the restaurant's conversion process, which channel was better, etc. Then we made the best adjustments before launching it on a large scale, and finally achieved satisfactory marketing results.

Therefore, one of the main reasons why many marketing campaigns often have good plans but fail in the end is that they are launched in large quantities without any testing. Good marketing campaign results are the result of good plans and continuous testing and optimization.

2. Blindly follow the trend and lose your own advantages

If you can't do it better than others, do it differently.

Many people make marketing plans in order to be "lazy". They often blindly follow others' activities and strategies. In the end, in most cases, others succeed, but your activities have little effect.

Many industries are now fully competitive, and a market situation of oversupply has emerged - users have limited choices, but there are too many products. Therefore, if you just blindly imitate others' practices without analyzing whether this practice is suitable for your own business and products, the result of this "laziness" will usually be ineffective marketing activities.

For example: After Taobao , there are often some entrepreneurial teams that vow to surpass Taobao, create the second Taobao, and so on. This approach basically ends in failure.

A better strategy is to develop a differentiated strategy based on your own strengths if your resources cannot keep up with the companies or products ahead of you. For example: Taobao is a large and comprehensive product, JD.com emphasizes product quality and logistics speed, NetEase Yanxuan focuses on overseas markets and other strategies, etc.

Some people may say that some people have achieved good results by imitating others' practices!

Of course, I am not saying that you are not allowed to imitate and refer to other people's practices, but you must understand the logic behind successful cases and not follow blindly. If you say that there are people who succeed by simply imitating others, I can only say that luck is probably the main factor. A better approach is to rationally analyze the logic of such successful cases and develop a strategy that suits you based on your own strengths. If you analyze the logic behind it and find that this approach is suitable for your own situation, then you are not blindly following the trend.

3. No data feedback, resulting in wasted marketing expenses

When doing practical cases, we often encounter some people who encounter such a situation: the activity does not achieve the expected results, but they don’t know what went wrong.

A big reason for this is that there is no data feedback, which results in the inability to monitor each link of your activity and makes it difficult to find the reasons why the activity is ineffective or successful. The data feedback includes the channels for event delivery, characteristics of different groups, different copywriting, user participation paths, etc. These must be recorded and traced in different testing and marketing activities. This will help us better understand what factors influence the ineffectiveness or success of an activity.

For example, I encountered a case some time ago about a domestic infant formula company. The ultimate consumer group of this platform was mothers. I am not a parent yet, so I cannot understand parents’ perceptions and the reasons that influence them to buy this product. However, when I was helping this company with data feedback, I discovered that this group of parents had a behavioral characteristic: even if the brand of milk powder was cheaper, many users were still willing to buy imported milk powder.

This information tells me that for infant formula products, price is not the main factor affecting this group's purchase of the product. Later, through data feedback, we found that many parents were influenced by previous negative news in the industry and their love for their children (people have a natural instinct to protect their children), so the target users valued the safety of the product more than the price factor. Based on these effective data feedback and analysis, the marketing strategies we adopt will be different.

Therefore, it is best to learn to master some marketing tools . Specific tools are recommended according to different activities. You can find a lot of them by searching on the Internet, so I won’t go into details. For example, e-commerce platforms have their own data tools .

Of course, this approach is very normal for people who do Internet marketing . For example, the Toutiao APP we all know will conduct data analysis and feedback based on the user's click content type, reading time and other behaviors, in order to more accurately increase the user's retention rate and monetization and other marketing goals.

Some people in offline stores will say, I am not an Internet company, how can I collect data? I think user data feedback is more of a way to understand users, not limited to tools. For example: your communication with customers, consumption records, adding WeChat friends, community management and observing user feedback are all ways to achieve user data feedback, and you can choose according to different situations.

4. The conversion process is not done well, and users cannot be retained after attracting traffic

Many entrepreneurs feel that the biggest reason why their business is not doing well is the lack of customers. Although the number of users is a very important factor in the final monetization, the author often finds a bigger problem - platforms or stores with very low user conversion rates and retention rates, no matter how good the traffic generation effect is, it is a waste of customer acquisition costs!

How can you make a profit if you can’t monetize the users you’ve attracted with so much difficulty?

I met a reader who runs a catering business in Jiangsu and came to me for advice after reading my article. He asked me how to better attract customers because he was losing money every month. After in-depth understanding, I found that the core problem of his store was not traffic , but problems in the conversion process. Because through research, we learned that users will never come back again after each visit - because the service and environmental decoration do not give guests a good experience. The experience of offline restaurants is very important. Therefore, even if there is more traffic, it is a waste.

The users of this company are like a bucket, and the users are like the water inside it. If there is a leak at the bottom of your bucket, no matter how much water you pour in, it will quickly flow away.

Therefore, achieving final monetization through user growth is a systematic process, not just doing a good job in attracting customers.

According to the business growth formula: sales = traffic conversion to user value (average order value) , growth and monetization is a systematic process (of course there are also sharing, fission and other processes).

• Traffic: The first step is to acquire target users through advertising, natural traffic, and fission of existing traffic.
• Conversion: When users come to your platform or store, you need to have relevant methods to increase the conversion rate of this traffic. For example: consuming your products, or being willing to stay on your platform.
• User value (average order value): You can increase the value of users to your business by the frequency with which they purchase your products (repurchase rate) and the amount they spend (average order value).

Therefore, if you only think about attracting traffic but do not optimize your conversion and retention links, your final business profit will not be high. Because if you want to increase a company's sales or profits, it is necessary to continuously improve each link (traffic, conversion rate, average order value, etc.). This is a systematic work, and high sales cannot be achieved by just one aspect.

5. Without understanding the product and the users, the best marketing strategy is just a castle in the air

It is a common sense that only if you understand your products and users can your marketing strategy be targeted and effective. But why did the author also write it?

Because the author has found that many marketers often do not pay attention to products and users when doing marketing activities. They are unwilling to spend time to gain an in-depth understanding of the products and your users, and are only concerned with studying various marketing methods, techniques, templates, etc. - in the end, the marketing plan looks beautiful, but is useless.

For example, some people see that a certain case has been trending on the market and they apply it to their own brand or company without understanding their own products and the real needs of their target users. The result is predictable.

Products and users are the foundation, and all marketing plans are carried out based on basic users and products. Don’t think you can come up with an effective marketing strategy without looking at the product and understanding your users . This is basic work. I won’t say much more, many classic marketing books have already emphasized it (Marketing 4P).

Summarize

Why aren’t your marketing campaigns having the desired effect?

It’s likely that you’re making some of the same mistakes we all make, which reduces your chances of marketing success. According to the author's summary, five mistakes that many people often make are found:

1. Investing heavily without testing can easily lead to ineffective marketing activities.
2. Blindly follow the trend and lose your own advantages
3. No data feedback, resulting in wasted marketing expenses
4. The conversion process is not done well, and users cannot be retained after attracting traffic
5. Without understanding the product and the users, the best marketing strategy is just a castle in the air

Of course, different activities or different people doing marketing will have different common mistakes. This article is based on the mistakes I have personally made and the mistakes I have seen many people make, and is for reference only.

–Pictures from the Internet, deleted if infringing –

Source: Mr. Monster (ID: Mister-shou)