“Here’s my whole marketing idea: treat people the way you want to be treated.” – Garth Brooks – American Singer

The above quote describes the soul of marketing in simple terms. Through marketing, most of the times, a company tries too hard to woo their potential customers; they forget one important aspect. Treat them wisely and don’t take their intelligence for granted. You can’t make fool of somebody for long by selling them an inferior product through a clever marketing ploy. Instead, as the owner of a business or the marketing head, first and foremost, you need to create value for your product in order to sell it.

People at the receiving end of marketing campaigns throughout the year have generally negative thoughts about the field. They see marketers as brainwashers, spin doctors and true manipulators who try to sell them the snake oil disguised as an exotic scent found only in tropical forests! Companies spend millions in devising the perfect strategy for a product but not every time they succeed. So what went wrong and how to create a flawless recipe for success.

Let me guide you so that you can know how to make a killing with a stellar marketing campaign and what mistakes to avoid that can spell disaster for all your marketing efforts.

Further Read: Land your Dream Job in Digital Marketing: Here is what you Need to Know

A Strong Marketing Effort

Companies usually don’t lie when they are promoting their products. Everyone knows that eventually they will be caught and there is severe punishment for a cheat and fraud company in the law. On the other hand, once they lose the trust of their current or potential customers, it can be deadly for their future.

As a business owner, you need to focus on the latest marketing practices. Use of traditional marketing practices like print and outdoor media make sense only for a handful of products/services now. For a small business/startup you need to focus on strategies related to digital marketing.

Be SMART in your Approach

SMART here stands for (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed) A marketing campaign that is not specific will obviously be wayward in its approach. Same goes for measurability as it is necessary to assess the results. Over optimism is also of no use and If it is not realistic than it you will have a hard time achieving the target. And finally, the timing of the campaign is critical. Launching a soft drink in the middle of winter is not a good idea in any part of the world.

People obsessed with numbers will more relate to SMART objectives but everyone can benefit from it. Once you will taste the success with these objectives, you will automatically adapt it for all your marketing campaigns.

Numerical Objectives

Numerical objectives can make a world of difference to your campaign as you can pinpoint several loose ends and focus on them. For example, a campaign’s target is to get 100 customers who are willing to buy a brand new 4K Apple TV inside 6 months. First of all, you need to try many different ways to see what strategies and tactics will work. Apart from using social media platforms, cold calling and a visit to the prospective customers are just some of the ways to get to your target. You can write down a marketing something like this:

20 calls/week         10 visits/month         Participation in at least 2 networking events/month.

Product Objectives

• Get at least 20 customers who are willing to buy the TV by the end of October.
• Launch a new website by end of November

The productive objectives listed above are just as important as numerical objectives so that you can know exactly what you need and by what time. The next logical step is tracking the results for an optimum outcome.

Further Read: 20 Email Marketing Stats Useful for Digital Marketers (Infographic)

Track Results

A common but grave mistake committed by companies is that they don’t track the outcome of both the numerical and product objectives they set. This results in total chaos as they don’t know which step proved beneficial and which step need some amendment in the execution. In simple terms, if you don’t track, you don’t know is your marketing plan is working in the first place or not. As an old saying, it’s okay to make mistakes so long as you learn from them. That’s why tracking is important to know your mistakes and amend them.

Know your Competitors

You need to have an idea about what your competitors are up to so that you can remain one step ahead of them. Keep tabs on your rival firms and study their weakness and plus points. Note what tactic they employed just once and what they regularly do. Analyze their success stories and also failures to come to a conclusion as how you want to make use of their experience. You need to pay attention to every move of your competitors so that you don’t rue the chance of outfoxing them.

Final Word

In marketing, success not only comes from what you need to do but also often from what not to do. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a marketing plan that is not able to get you the even half the number of customers you are anticipating is simply not worth it. A prolific marketing campaign can be your ticket to success but it doesn’t come easy.

I hope you will learn from the mistakes that businesses commit and how to cash in the opportunities from this blog. If you want to add something to this blog or want to give your valuable feedback, then please use the comments section below.