Why Marketing Fails #2: Follow The Herd Marketing
Do NOT follow the herd when it comes to choosing marketing techniques. Doing what everyone else does or doing what’s the latest-and-greatest is a sure path to marketing failure.
People tell me they want a marketing plan, but what they really mean is, “Tell me exactly which techniques to choose and when to do them.”
Guess what? There is no one single perfect, magic marketing plan that will guarantee results for every single business owner. Why? Because everyone’s audience is different, everyone’s marketing message is different, and everyone’s marketing goals are different.
The last time I counted, there were over 30 internet marketing techniques available, and at least 50 traditional marketing techniques to choose from. How can one-size-fits-all come from 80 choices?
Instead, it’s time to do your homework. And the place to do your homework is in crafting a Marketing Plan. A marketing plan takes you step-by-step through all the topics you need to consider when doing the marketing for your business, including:
- defining your target audience
- defining your niche (which is different from a target audience)
- setting your marketing goals
- analyzing your competition
- setting your prices
- determining your unique selling proposition
Whatever you do, don’t just jump on the bandwagon of every new marketing technique that comes along. That kind of knee-jerk reaction will put you in the poor house faster than you can say Shotgun Approach To Marketing.
Let me give you a good example: social media marketing. Everyone says, “Oh, get a Facebook account!” But the majority of Facebook users (50.1%) are 18-34 years old. So why would you market on Facebook if your target audience is a female 45-65 year old CEO if you weren’t sure she hangs out on Facebook? But maybe a 45-65 male CEO of a tech company does hang out on Facebook. Know your audience and find out where they hang out…then get in front of them.
I know it takes time and effort to research and write a marketing plan. But only through marketing planning can you have the confidence of knowing you’ve chosen the best techniques from the 80+ available, will be executing the techniques in the correct order, at the right time of year. I’d trade confident marketing for quick marketing any day.
I’ll be adding to this series each Thursday, and you can check out all the past posts in the Why Marketing Fails series here.
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11 Responses to “Why Marketing Fails #2: Follow The Herd Marketing”
Category: Marketing
Tags: marketing failure , why marketing fails series
Karyn:
First as a fellow Redhead Entrepreneur let me tell you how much I enjoy reading your blog and website. I just wanted to add a note about Facebook.
I am an ebook publisher (KnowledgeStar). If I was simply doing Social Marketing for the majority of my Readers and Customers you’re right, I would never even think about Facebook.
In this particular case I’m selling an ebook for people on Social Security who want to increase their benefits. Online marketing guru Yanik Silver convinced me to use Facebook because they also sell incredibly well-targeted ads.
These ads produced a much higher click-through rate for 58-70 year old Facebookers with time on their gnarled old hands than I ever thought were out there.
Just wanted to let you know that there are a lot of Boomers on Facebook and other social networks that are too often only characterized as watering holes for the young.
09 Feb 2009 at 9:16 pm
That’s good information to know, David!
10 Feb 2009 at 12:44 pm
Hi Karyn -
What is it about redheads=entrepreneurs? As a fellow redhead, also, your Tweets caught my eye so I had to visit your blog. Very astute observations re: different marketing strokes for different folks. In my particular case, intuition has played a fairly significant role as well. It’s pretty amazing how our instincts speak to us when we allow ourselves to listen. Then the research and the knowledge kick in and we’re off!
Thanks for the wisdom…
Mary Beth
02 Jul 2010 at 2:06 pm
Redheads rule, Mary Beth! LOL! Glad you liked the post.
02 Jul 2010 at 2:29 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Karyn Greenstreet. Karyn Greenstreet said: Why Marketing Fails #2: Knee Jerk Marketing — http://bit.ly/ddkQoB [...]
09 Jul 2010 at 5:53 pm
Thanks for this information. The internet people I work with say what David said. I only wish it was true that I didn’t need FB. It takes so much time, maybe I just don’t know the best way to use it.
12 Jul 2010 at 2:52 pm
Hi, Marilyn. It’s entirely possible that you’re not using FB correctly as a relationship-building tool. It’s about having conversations with your clients and prospective clients, sharing ideas and tips, but not spending hours a day on it. Maybe you need to re-think exactly how you want to use FB and how much time a week you want to spend on it? (Also, are you getting any results from using it?)
12 Jul 2010 at 2:55 pm
I couldn’t help but notice that the Facebook statistics you quoted from were dated Sept/2009. And although I get your point about marketing using the latest “flavor of the month,” you should be aware of the current Facebook statistics:
There are over 400 million users with over 103 million users in the USA. (Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)
18-24 age group accounts for 25.3%
25-34 accounts for 24.8%
35-54 accounts for 29%
55+ 9.5%
Females – 54.3%
Males – 42.6%
(Source: http://www.istrategylabs.com/2010/01/facebook-demographics-and-statistics-report-2010-145-growth-in-1-year/)
CTR (Click through rate) vary, but as far as my own experience with Facebook goes, it also varies from anywhere from about 2.43% to 6.41%. Adwords on Google get less than 2%. This makes is cheaper for me to run a marketing campaign through Facebook (and I do use other marketing methodologies).
I help business owners utilized the power of the internet to get more local leads and cut their ad budget by 50%. Maybe since my demographics have a wider age range is why it works well for me.
For the record… I’m in full agreement with everything else in your post and it was absolutely not my intention to be rude. I apologize if it seems that way. I’m just calling ‘em as I see ‘em.
12 Jul 2010 at 8:38 pm
Thanks for the udpate, Mike. Your stats still show that 50.1% of FB users are in the 18-34 age range as of January 1, 2010, with 29% in the 35-54 range. (I wish they’d break down that 35-54 range into some smaller groupings like they do with the two previous groups!) It will be interesting to watch FB over the next year. My experience is that FB click-throughs on posted profile links (non-paid-ads) is quite small (2-3%) and from Twitter even smaller. But this has to do with who my audience is and where they hang out online.
Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot of good reasons to be on FB and Twitter for accessibility and building relationships, but it depends on whether your audience not only has an account on these services but also if they actively use them. I’d love to see some stats about the number of people who have accounts but haven’t logged in for the past 3 months.
Also, the paid advertising click-through rates I’m hearing about from others are less than 1%, which has been my own experience as well. Again, a function of target demographic and ad fatigue, as well as the quality and value of the ad.
When I looked it up to see what others were getting for their clickthrough rates, this is what I found:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=74100576336&topic=12730&post=59344
http://www.tbiresearch.com/facebook-is-improving-its-self-serve-display-service-for-advertisers-2010-1
http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/twitter-clickthrough-rate/ (This is an excellent article and explains click-through rate as a function of how many “friends” you have.)
If you have any links to share, I’d love to see them! Statistics help me to make sense of what I’m experiencing in the real world, and as we’re all aware, statistics can be “interpreted” to mean many, sometimes opposing, things.
P.S. I agree with you re: Adwords on Google. I used to get great clickthrough rates several years ago, but it’s steadily dropped to the point where I just don’t use them anymore. But I have extraordinary organic SERPs through SEO for the keywords I’m targeting, which yields huge clickthroughs.
13 Jul 2010 at 6:51 am
Wow, 80 different ways to market our business. I have tried a little bit of this and that. I usually start with a plan- where future clients may be found and then end up doing what I like to do (web design, writing, etc).
I know what works for me, and I haven’t tried FB yet for anything but connecting with friends and fmaily. Thanks for the reminder, the updated statistics, and interesting discussion.
13 Jul 2010 at 3:35 pm
Yeah, Marci, when I started to tally up all the different ways I know to market your business, I came up with over 80 ways. I think that’s a good thing, because it allows us to choose marketing techniques that match our personalities, skills, budget and time constraints.
13 Jul 2010 at 6:14 pm