What good is the marketer if he cannot help you sell the “Brooklyn Bridge” that you (supposedly) own? After all, the job of the marketer is to help business owners sell their products no matter how bad the product may be! But before the marketer can sell that “Brooklyn Bridge” he needs to sell himself to you, the business owners, and convince you that he is the right person for the job. And therein lies the potential issues with hiring marketers.
The marketers will do anything to get your business, even if it means stretching the truth – commonly known as lying. There are many marketers who promise the moon to business owners and make them spend money on the programs that don’t produce any results. I have always maintained that business owners first need to focus on business fundamentals before spending money on marketing. My 5 fundamental rules of marketing highlight these points. I also showed why business owners should not waste their money by making common marketing mistakes Here I will show 5 promises (lies) marketers make that you, as a business owner, need to be wary of.
- Our advertisement reaches thousands of people. While this is a good start it does not help if those thousands of people do not pay attention to the advertising message. How many times have you looked at the advertising flyers received in the mail or paid attention to the advertising on the radio or television? The marketers like to charge based on the number of people receiving the message, but business owners do not get the benefit if that message goes straight to the waste basket.
- We have a proven ROI model for advertising. Run for the cover when you hear this next time. The marketers try to overcome the doubts raised in the earlier bullet by telling this lie. No matter how good the marketer is it is very difficult to prove the ROI on the marketing. The newer pay-per-click advertising model of web based advertising come close to it, but even they are not perfect. Most of the time marketing requires you to take a leap of faith and not worry about establishing connection between dollar spent and dollar earned as a result.
- You need to use aggressive coupons to get more customers. Even an idiot can tell you that the customers will rush to your door if you give away your products for free. Many marketers try to push businesses into giving too much discount in the name of attracting new customers. The latest fad of daily deals promoted by Groupon and others end up costing lot of money to business owners. I am not sure if they are as good a marketing model as they promise.
- If you don’t advertise, your competitors will and you will end up losing business to them. Now there is some truth to this argument. You do need to advertise to keep your business on top of customers’ mind. The question is how much you are willing to spend for that. I believe there are inexpensive ways to attract customers, such as asking customers to do marketing, using free samples for marketing purpose or other innovative marketing techniques You should try to utilize those before spending money on traditional advertising.
- You have to advertise to attract new customers. Yes, advertising is necessary to attract new customers, but as mentioned earlier there are other less expensive ways you should look at first. Besides, you should not forget the customers you already have while you are trying to attract new ones. Look at these techniques to hold onto existing customers before starting to spend money on attracting new customers.
What other lies have you encountered when talking to marketers?
