Don’t Bother With This Kind Of Marketing

There’s a famous advertising quote that goes something like this “half the money I spend on my advertising is wasted.  The problem is I don’t know which half!”
Sound familiar?

But that’s only part of the problem.  With all the marketing hype out there, its harder than ever to discern what kind of marketing you should be doing and where to invest your money for the biggest marketing bang.

It’s time for some plain talk marketing.

I’m not going to presume I know your business and tell you exactly what you should do.  I can’t.  There’s no such thing as a one size fits all marketing plan.  Every business is unique and requires a very specific marketing prescription to tap into new markets and connect with new customers.

But I can tell you what kinds of marketing you should not be doing.  These are universal, applicable to each and every business because they’re either hopelessly outdated, or were never effective in the first place.

Here’s a quick Marketing black list to avoid at all costs:

1.)     Avoid broadcast marketing messages that are “pushed” out to everyone and anyone.  Generic marketing is well and truly dead.  Welcome to the age of specialized marketing – using tightly targeted messages to reach specific audiences.

2.)     Avoid any marketing that isn’t trackable and measurable.  You need to know to the penny what the effectiveness of your advertising is.  If you don’t know, then you’re going to need to sharpen your psychic powers, because how else will you know if it’s actually working?

3.)     Avoid plain old brand ads.  The world is cluttered enough.  Truly, no one cares about how cool your logo looks, or what your tagline says.  Every ad has to answer the old question for your customer “what’s in it for me?”.

4.)     Avoid any kind of marketing that even remotely looks like what your competitors are doing.  If you can remove your brand from an ad or your website and insert your competitor’s, and no one could tell the difference – that’s a giant fail.  How are your customers supposed to choose you above everyone else if you look the same?  Make it easy for them by making your marketing different.  Truly distinctive.