Five Major Marketing Mistakes that Advertising Can’t Fix

Your ad campaign’s not going too well?

Last time, we had a look at some media planning and creative issues that might endanger your ad campaign… But sometimes, the challenge might be deeper… A lot deeper… Here’s some major marketing mistakes that will derail an ad campaign through no fault of the agency…

1) “We’ve built it, now they will come”-kind-of-product: entrepreneurs are often in love with their product. They will add features after features, forgetting in the process what the final user wants or need. Feedback on ease of use or performance is not gathered. Cost is not kept in check. The result? A product that nobody wants such as dog dentures, Windows Vista, Atari’s Jaguar console, etc.

2) Bad Pricing: sometimes, the product or service is too expensive (or not enough). Just think of some eBay vendors selling items they’re convinced those will fetch an astronomical price in a non-existing collector market or a beer brand with a price so low that consumers are wary of its quality.

3) Bad Distribution: have you ever tried to find a certain product but just gave up when you couldn’t find it? Product access can be difficult if its distributors are too few, in out-of-the-way places, etc. Store and with limited facilities for people with disabilities might also shoot themselves in the foot if the target market are seniors or handicapped people.

4) Product reputation: if your product has a reputation – undeserved of course – for bad customer service, dubious quality, high pressure sales tactics, and ad nauseam, your ads will underperform until the day when you directly address this presupposed cause through a direct ad campaign and through consumer experience scripting.

5) End-of-Lifecycle Product: it happens that a product may have been pushed toward the end of its lifecycle by a competing market disruptor redefining the whole of the market niche. As an example, it would be very difficult nowadays to sell non-smart phones in the current market. Likewise, selling VCRs and DVD players is a very difficult proposition these days.