|
When a company operates on the Internet, it has many
options and tools it can use to make it stand out and be recognized. But
there are a few marketing mistakes that can nullify all the good things you
do and virtually guarantee a quick, yet excruciating failure to sell your
online services. To wit:
●
We have
“way smarter than you” plan of action
The standard issue “confusion whirlwind” designed to
stupefy into a purchase that only works on Mars and inside the heads of
demented techno geeks. Who wants to hear or read a bunch of technical
jargon that leaves you more confused than when you started looking for the
right company? Not me.
● Speaking to
an audience that doesn’t need your product
This one seems so simple that it shouldn’t even be
given mention, but it happens all too regularly. If you wrote wills for a
living, would you target high school students? Would you advertise a Battle
of the Headbanger Bands during “Murder, She Wrote”? Find your audience and
cater to their likes, dislikes, and needs- not the other way around.
● Cheapest
price = sure fire money maker
There are still a great deal of startup companies that
think the lower they go, the better their odds of survival are. So whatever
happened to evaluating costs and developing a quality product/service for a
fair price? Most companies that have a price that appears “too good to be
true”……well, you know the rest. Santayana-like, they are most likely doomed
to repeat the history of their failed predecessors.
● The
venture capital Badge of Honor
There was a time when getting venture capital was a
sign that you had made it. Now it just lumps you with a TON of
companies who found increasingly creative and moronic ways to blow through
multi-million dollar payouts in just months.
Just run a smart operation and make the money you earn.
● Starting,
ending, and filling the middle of every sentence with meaningless buzzwords
This is a pet peeve of mine. I would love to live in a
world that eradicated buzz words from the English language.
After all, who wants a cost effective solution that
shows R.O.I. on a Java driven e-commerce application set to turn a reactive
industry into a proactive one through turnkey packages and portals!
I hope the general public has grown as weary of these
now meaningless collections of vowels and consonants as I have over the past
few years. And if you have read the sample sentence above and you still
have intense pain in your temples, apply ice and lay down for 30 minutes
before continuing your reading.
Now we know there are worse things you can do than the
stuff enumerated above, like puke on the CEO’s dog or make a seemingly (to
you) innocent comment pertaining to his teenage daughter.
But if you at least stay away from the traps we’ve
mentioned, that’s several less things to worry about.
Then, you can concentrate on losing sales in other more
creative ways.
|
