No one is perfect and everyone can make mistakes.
However, it is important not to repeat them and to be able to learn from them.
In marketing, it is even easier to make these mistakes or errors.
So, here are the most important rules to follow:
Try not to always be the first
It seems pointless to advise you not to be the first, but nowadays there are so many new marketing channels that it is better not to rush to try them all. Especially when these channels are new and untested. You will most likely waste your time rather than finding the perfect solution.
At the same time, you don't want to be the last either. The key is to wait as long as necessary to test the market. Once a channel is proven to be safe, then you can try it yourself to see if you can use it for your business.
Take advantage of these while they last
Every channel that works will eventually stop working the same way. Most remain the same and in vogue, some lose some of that popularity, and some just don't work as well.
For example, Facebook grew by sending invitation emails to everyone in your email address book. That just doesn't work anymore, at the moment.
When you find a channel that works amazingly well, take advantage and enjoy it while it lasts. As time goes on, you'll want to keep using it, but naturally you'll need to slow down to keep it at its best.
Sales and marketing should be handled by one person
To truly grow, you need to understand the whole picture. From how someone lands on your site, to what they're looking for, to how to sell, resell and retain a customer.
You have to think about the whole cycle that a customer goes through.
For this reason, a company eventually needs a Chief Revenue Officer (especially in the B2B world). A CRO is someone who handles both sales and marketing. Departments can run separately but need a head to lead them.
When both departments do not report to a single boss, there is usually an error. This will result in lower customer conversion rates.
You have to think long term
You know very well that it is necessary to make a return on investment plan, but it is important to think about this plan for the long term.
Specifically, if you want to beat the competition, you need to have a 3+ year perspective. This will open up more marketing channels that your competition cannot look at due to investors and external pressure.
With your marketing, it doesn't mean you have to lose money for 3 or more years to beat your competition. It means you just have to get creative.
Doing this kind of thing requires patience as it can take years for creative ideas to come to fruition, but it will be worth it.
Never rely on just one channel
Good channels don't stay as popular and successful forever and it's too risky if your marketing is solely based on one channel.
If it disappears or stops working for your business, it will destroy you. You can't control algorithms and you can't always predict costs. Focus on an approach that can work across multiple channels.
In other words, you can't just do SEO or social media marketing. Finally, you should try to use all major marketing channels.
Marketing will have higher costs over time
Marketing rarely gets cheaper. You can't control this. If you want to focus on marketing, you should especially consider conversion optimization. It's the only way to stay in the game as costs rise.
Try to run at least one verification test once a month and use both quantitative and qualitative data to make decisions.
Try to give a concrete and precise message
No matter how effective your traffic generation skills are, they won't do you any good if people don't understand why they should buy from you over the competition.
A great example of this is Airbnb. They are ahead of Home Away and worth about ten times as much.
Both companies have a similar product and both have executed well. Airbnb came out much later, but they knew how to execute their messages.
Spend time crafting and refining the right messages. The perfect message usually requires creating a story and understanding customers.
You may have to ask your customers or talk to them on the phone, but ultimately you can come up with the right message using qualitative data. And once you've found the right messages, retest the market every year, because market conditions can change, which will affect the quality of your messages.
Numbers never lie
Opinions don't matter!
Marketing should always be a data-driven approach. Follow the numbers and keep checking back as things can change over time. What works now may not work in the future due to external factors beyond your control.
For example, if your users claim to hate opt-out windows, but the data shows that an opt-out window increases monthly revenue by 10%, then still use the opt-out window.
People in the organization may not agree with you, but as long as you are not doing anything unethical, follow the data.
It is necessary to create a brand for yourself
Whether it's corporate or personal, people are connecting more with brands. From Nivea to Nike, people prefer brands. By building a brand, you are actually building longevity with your marketing.
No matter how small or large your company is, you should continuously work on improving your brand.
When people want to buy sneakers, they don't always search on Google. Instead, they immediately think of "Nike" or "Adidas." If people want fast food, they always go to McDonalds or KFC.
Always protect your brand
You will have opportunities to generate quick sales or traffic, but at the sacrifice of your brand image. Try not to get into this situation or do this.
It is better to have less traffic and sales in the short term than to spoil the image in the long term. If you sacrifice your brand, you will find that it will be difficult to recover and will cost you much more.
Don't take the easy way out
Anytime someone comes up with a shortcut for social media or SEO, avoid it. Most of the time, these won't last long and could bring you more problems.
Better to be safe and think long term.
Don't market bad products
Bringing a shoddy or shoddy product, service or website to market simply won't work.
Considering that the entire web is very competitive and it's easier to create a website online, you need to make sure that you have an incredible product or service.
It's 10 times easier to market something people will like than to promote something people won't care about.
No matter how good you are at marketing, it's not easy to market something that people don't want.
Don't always follow conventional marketing rules
Doing what everyone else is doing will not always work or in the long run. Doing the opposite usually works much better.
It may seem risky to go against the crowd, but it's one of the best ways to grow when you're in a saturated market.
It's normal to be scared or afraid of challenges
If you enjoy everything you do when it comes to marketing, something is not right. You have to get scared and go through a mix of emotions every time you launch a new marketing campaign.
If you're not, then you're not pushing your limits.
So don't be afraid of new challenges. The higher the risk, the higher the reward.
Those who push the limits tend to have a greater reward than those who dare not try.
Choose the right influencers for your team.
People tend to connect more deeply with individuals versus corporate brands. Look for up-and-coming content creators early as they will help you attract customers faster.
Make sure your influencers are related to your business, otherwise it won't work and will just be a waste of time and money.
For example, if you sell products related to fashion and clothes, Instagram influencers who have popular fashion channels will help increase sales.
Videos are the future
People will want to connect with you and your company.
The most important rule of thumb here is to integrate video into your marketing strategy.
When you create videos, don't just put them on your website.
Put the same videos everywhere. From social media to collaborating with other websites to share your videos on their site, try to expand your distribution reach.
Videos tend to be more effective than text-based ads. Even though they are more expensive to run, you will get much higher results.
Accept that you cannot know them all
Marketing is always changing. No matter how good you are or how good you are with a certain tactic, never stop learning more.
Having the attitude that you know it all will only bring you failures.
You must have an open mind and be willing to learn from anyone, even newcomers to the market with little or no experience, as they always bring new perspectives.
Keep testing what works for you.
Due to external factors beyond your control, things can change at any time.
Always try and test methods that have worked in the past every few months to make sure they can still help you.
When you don't retest these techniques, you'll find that your conversion rates will drop over time without you actually knowing why.
Most people don't read the whole message
If you write a masterpiece, expect that most people won't read it. Make sure you have easy-to-navigate marketing content and landing pages. Without this notion, you will lose a lot of sales.
Things like design, spacing, colors, and typography all affect readability and how easy it is to navigate through a piece of content.
Indeed, the message you want to convey is very important, but if no one will read it, then you will not generate sales.
Headlines are more important than content
7 out of 10 people will read your headline, while only 3 will click and read your content. Spend as much time as it takes to create a title. In fact, you spend as much time creating a headline as you do the content itself.
If you have amazing content and a terrible title, in the end it won't be read.
Test as many headline variations as possible as this will help you come up with a winning version.
Expand internationally after you know your core market
English is always competitive. But markets like Asia and Latin America don't have as much competition, and people in these regions are willing to spend more money.
Translate your website, content, product and service as quickly as possible (while maintaining their quality, of course!). This will result in more marketing opportunities and a continuous stream of income.
When choosing new markets, don't just look at GDP and population. If a region has a slightly lower GDP but a larger population, consider going after the one with the larger population first.
Be willing to start over every year
Don't expect to grow just by doubling down on what worked in the past, because that rarely works.
With the mindset that you have to start over and redo all your marketing initiatives every year, you'll grow faster because you'll be responsive to change.
This doesn't mean you should ignore what has worked for you over the past 12 months, it means you need to keep doing it and rethink and retry new tactics.
Good ideas are worthless if you don't have the right team
You'll have tons of ideas you want to test, but if you don't have people to take care of them, they'll never come to fruition.
If you want to grow as fast as possible, you need people to take the lead and drive each of your marketing initiatives. This will also allow you to fine tune each channel and get the most out of them.
Also, any good idea will have no impact on people unless you hire a good marketer who knows how to process it.
It's important to hire the right person, because that's the only way you'll be able to make your ideas stand out.
So take the time to find the right person or team, because it will be worth it if you want to excel in the field you're in.
Don't hire inexperienced people if you want to grow fast
There's nothing wrong with hiring people who need training, but not if you want to grow as fast as possible.
If you want more traffic and sales as fast as possible, you can't hire people who need a hand or training. Hire marketers with industry experience who know how things are from day one.
Ideally, you could even consider hiring marketers who have worked for your competition in the past and done very well.
It takes 3 months for a marketer to be in top shape
No matter how skilled the marketer you hire is, even if they come from your competition, it usually takes 3 months for them to find their groove.
So when you decide to hire them, be patient and be willing to give them at least 3 months before you decide what you want to do.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't see some engagement from them, you should see results within the first 3 months (even if they are small), but you still need to be patient.
People love stories
Story making or storytelling (in general) goes back centuries. They were effective then and are still effective today (and will be in a few years). Try incorporating stories into your content as well. It will help you connect better with your audience.
By having a better connection, you will have higher conversion rates.
Follow current trends
If you see the market moving in a direction, even if you don't think it will last forever, consider joining.
Even if you don't like to follow trends or be like the rest of the crowd, you'll find that attracting customers will usually be much easier or faster this way.
Use tools like Google Trends to help you determine what trends are popular and see how the market is evolving.
Optimize your content for revenue, not top channel metrics
In marketing, constantly checking numbers like monthly visitors is beneficial, but not the most important value. Optimizing for leads isn't enough either.
Your follow-up must encompass the entire process. By optimizing revenue, you'll be able to make better decisions and see faster growth.
When looking at the whole process, remember that it shouldn't stop with a purchase. There are many other aspects to consider besides this, such as upsells, repeat purchases, cross-sells and even the number of people who stop using your product.
Follow the rule of 7
People need to hear about your brand or see your brand 7 times before they turn into a real customer. In other words, you have to be everywhere if you want to gain market share.
With every company offering similar products and services, people find it difficult to decide who to buy from. If your brand is more widespread, people are more likely to choose you.
Make sure you use as many proven effective marketing channels as possible.
Conclusion
We know some of the principles above may seem obvious to you, but you'll find that both you and your team will make many of these mistakes, no matter how obvious they seem.
Whether it's the principles above or your own, consider creating your own list for your team to follow. And this rule is not only valid for marketing.
After all, it's important to do what's efficient and right for you and your company, and never give up. Keep doing what you're doing until you get the success you want.
Frequent questions
- What is an influencer?
An influencer or content creator is that person in the online environment who has the power or credibility to influence or guide a person, regarding the decision to buy a certain product or service, in most cases. They can also bring recognition to their followers about a particular social cause or social movement.
- What does GDP mean?
Gross domestic product is a macroeconomic indicator that reflects the final value of goods and services produced in all economic areas of a country, in a specified period of time, usually during a year. This value is a very good indicator of a country's economic growth.
- What is B2B?
Business-to-business is a form of trading between 2 companies or businesses, from which both can benefit. For example, B2B can be when a business supplies materials for the production process to a business that deals with manufacturing. Thus, both businesses benefit from this transaction process.
- What is a CRO?
CRO, in business or rather, in marketing can mean 2 things:
Conversion Rate Optimization or Chief Risk Officer.
In general, a conversion could be seen as any customer action that you can measure using analytics tools like Google Analytics. Thus, conversion rate optimization refers to efforts to improve or multiply these actions.
And a Chief Risk Officer is the person in charge of efforts to reduce business risks that can jeopardize a business's profitability and productivity.