Tag Archives: Marketing

Lifehacks

Why Your Marketing Strategies Suck (And How to Fix Them)

EntrepreneurFinesse.com - Good To Great Marketing Strategies

Who likes to be proven wrong?

Nobody wants to fail, especially not enthusiastic start-up entrepreneurs.

Often the best way to find out what works in marketing is to analyze what does not work.  In my business consulting firm I have helped many successful companies and some failures too. While there are many reasons for business failure, these marketing blunders are an all too common factor in startup demise. A great startup knows how to utilize technology in the best interests of the people in their company and their bottom line. For example, a local chiropractor would do well by positioning themselves on Google search with SEO (Get found online with Hari Menon Digital).

These are the worst marketing tactics I have observed small businesses use most often which result in money loss, weak sales, and most critically the loss of the entrepreneur’s confidence and drive.

Learn from other entrepreneurs’ marketing mistakes and spare yourself a business failure.

EntrepreneurFinesse.com - Good To Great Marketing Strategies

Failing Marketing Strategies and How To Correct

More Is Better

Often called the “spray and pray” marketing program. The premise is that if you make ten sales presentations and nobody buys then you should make a hundred more of the same flawed sales presentation.  The concept is if you work extra hard success will naturally follow. However, doing more of the same failing activities will only bring you more business failure. People fall into this trap because working super hard gives them the perception of progress, but it is only an illusion.

How to Correct

Instead, after those ten bad sales presentations, take a step back, and review the why’s of your failure. Be humble and open to learning the truth. Ask yourself these fact-finding questions:

  • Are these the wrong type of target customers for your product or service?
  • Is your presentation compelling enough demonstrating the benefits of purchase?
  • Do you need additional sales training,? Are you selling in the right manner, i.e., in person or online?

Time spent in this manner will yield valuable information to adjust your marketing strategy for greater success – while ultimately spending less time and energy for better results.

Word-of-Mouth

Some entrepreneurs wrongly think that because they are so excited about their product that the world will be too. Immediately when the world hears about their new product, they will beat a path to their door with money.  You think that if your Facebook followers, friends and family spread the word about your product, your cash register will start ringing. Word-of-Mouth may work in a service-based business like garage door repair, but don’t expect it to work as well for a product launch. Wishful thinking that almost never happens.

Today, everybody is so saturated with information and busy with their lives and activities that they will hardly notice that your new product has arrived in the marketplace. Also, your loving family and friends may not be your target customer, nor are influencers in your industry. Thus their support will generate no buzz.

How to Correct

Before your product launches, spend time creating a community of people, both online and off-line, which are your target customers and industry influencers that have active lines of communication with the public.

Then at launch time hire marketing professionals and graphic artists to create compelling, funny, and share-worthy graphics, videos, and audio about your product. Share those interesting items with your newly-created community, and your influencer contacts to get the buzz started and make sales.

All I Need Are Ads

Many new entrepreneurs take this easy, but expensive, route of advertising online, on Facebook or Google, without any other marketing strategies to launch their products. After they had spent thousands of dollars and got little results, many are so discouraged and broke that they quit and close their company. Don’t let this happen to you.

Because major sites such as Facebook and Google have made it easy to set up ad campaigns, new entrepreneurs are led to believe that they have set it up correctly. That is very far from the truth. Many of the most sophisticated and knowledgeable online entrepreneurs that I know hire dedicated specialists to set up their advertising campaigns on these sites. Unless you are an online advertising professional, you will overspend and underachieve with these types of ad campaigns.

How to Correct

A far more effective marketing strategy is to connect via social media, search engines, forums, and your website with your target customers groups, called “tribes.”  A great way to get started is with PlacementSEO. Your tribe is a group of your target customers with common interests and a desire for your new product. A particularly effective way to tap into your tribe is through Groups on Facebook and Linkedin.com. Make sure you optimize the performance, security, and SEO efficiency of your website by moving to a strong web host such as SiteGround (see video).

Certainly, this process will take more time, legwork, and effort, but less cash than clicking a few buttons and advertising. Beginning entrepreneurs need to conserve their cash as much as possible for those expenses that no amount of legwork will buy. For more information on how to find and connect with your Tribe, read, or listen to the MP3, the marketing guru Seth Godin’s book, Tribes – We need you to lead us.  

Entrepreneurs have some fun and get great startup ideas with this cool Business Idea Generator.

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Courses

Tai Lopez Social Media Marketing Agency Program Review

Entrepreneur Lifestyle

How awesome would it be to start your own social agency and be your own boss?

Welcome to my full in-depth review of Tai Lopez’s Social Media Marketing Agency Program. Imagine, instead of being stuck in a boring, grey cubicle you were free and able to travel to distant locales like the beaches of Bahamas or the pyramids in Egypt. Instead of taking orders from a boss, you are the boss. You could travel the world, enjoy experiences you have never seen before and even discover exciting ideas from other countries. All of this would not be possible if you were stuck in a normal 9 to 5 job.

Entrepreneur Lifestyle

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Books

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Predictably Irrational Header

Why can people be irrational when it comes to making simple everyday decisions?

Well, it’s as simple as understanding the human psychology of the hidden forces that shape our decisions. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely is a fundamental book on why humans, customers and buyers decide to take action.

For instance, the concept of anchoring is an important tool to understand. If you purchased your first KIND Bar for $4.00 and your friend purchased the same KIND Bar for $0.50 at another store, when you and your friend purchase another KIND Bar for $2.50, the perspective between you vs your friend will be completely different. In the real world, anchoring comes from the manufacturers suggested retail prices (MSRP), advertised prices, promotions, product introductions, etc. – all of which are supply side variables, meaning pricing can be controlled to influence customer decisions.

What does this show? That our first decisions resonate over a long sequence of decisions. First impressions are incredibly important.

“….people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.” – Dan Ariely

On another note, the power of FREE! has tremendous benefits. Experiments were ran in France comparing the results of offering shipping for $1 Franc vs offering FREE! shipping. What happened was that shipping for $1 Franc was virtually ignored by purchasers. FREE! shipping on the other hand resulted in an enthusiastic response by customers.

APredictably Irrationalnother interesting thing to note about FREE! is that it subtly changes decisions from monetary transactions to social transactions, which has an enormous impact on how others view us and our actions. The conclusion: no one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social exchange world and away from market norms. Hundreds of years ago when individuals were mostly farmers and fending for themselves and their families, economies mostly ran on social transactions, resulting in bonds between traders, potentially connecting people and their resources.

These experiments show that cash will only take you so far – social norms are the forces that can make a difference in the long run. Our task as entrepreneurs is to figure out which of the two – social or market norms – will product the most desirable outcome.

The price of ownership is another interesting concept in the book. It is true that the idea of possessions causes us to view objects in different perspectives. We fall in love with what we already have. Another thing is that we focus on what we may lose, rather than what we may gain. A third quirk is that we assume other people will see the transaction from the same perspective as we do. All this mean is that ownership has its own pecularities. The more work you put into something, the more ownership you begin to feel for it and lose perception of its actual value in the marketplace.

Our brains work in fascinating ways. Although we may believe we are rational and logical decision makers as consumers in our everyday lives, the hidden reality is that we are emotional creatures that make seemingly questionable decisions. Understand these hidden forces and you will be aware of how decisions are shaped in our everyday lives.

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Author:
Tag: Recommended Books
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Year: 2010
ASIN: B002C949KE
ISBN: 9780061353246

Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup? When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're making smart, rational choices....

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About the Book

Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?

When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we’re making smart, rational choices. But are we?

In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They’re systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

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Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

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