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While listening to the business owners talk about marketing, most of them say that they have no idea how marketing works, and that they find Facebook very annoying. Everyone needs to do some marketing for their business, so why is it so, that so many folks suck (or think they do) at marketing? Here are the three marketing buzzkills, that might be eating up your revenue alive…
Stencils marketing
We all have stereotypes in our head, how marketing “should” be done. We try to fit our marketing needs to those ideas from the best-selling marketing books. We then, wonder, why is it not working for me. Or better yet, we do it, and still doubt ourselves, whether this would work for the current business you are running. Well, if you borrow someone’s idea, you can’t expect it become “yours”… On the other hand, those marketing plan templates…. let me tell you how outdated they are… very…. you simply cannot plan anything out for the whole year ahead. At Cucumber we call it a Marketing FLOW, not a plan. How can you plan for something that doesn’t exist? A new marketing tool will pop up next month, Facebook will change their advertising policy, AdWords will start offering a new feature. Do not plan, conceptualize. Have a vision, and be flexible by going with YOUR flow.
Competition-fever
Oh, yes. We all have done it. Small or big. Male or female. Startup, growing, multimillion. All business owners, or business managers do obsess over their competition. For different reasons. Of course you do need to know what your competitors are doing, but the days of WAR WALLS are over. You don’t need to spy on your competition, in order to provide better service / product to your customers. On the opposite, if you think from your own position, from where you are, and what you’ve got to offer, you WILL be different. And this is the only way to “out-marketing” even the “big boys” with their big marketing budgets.
Perfection-obsession
As a (fingers-crossed) recovering perfectionist myself, I just realized that perfectionism is not a badge of honour, it’s a disease. It comes from the space of doubt, a weak decision-making muscle, fear of judgement. There’s no limit to perfection. You can perfect until cows come home, and your website, marketing copy, social media campaign is still not perfect. Don’t get me wrong, you must aim for the highest possible result. But obsession over little details just gets you further from the actual result. The more you think, the more reasons your brain will come up with NOT to launch. This will get annoying, not exciting, unproductive, and will affect some of the other areas of your business, as you are getting more into that indecisive zone.
You don’t have to be a marketing superstar to do marketing for your business. You do however need to own your marketing, and be crystal clear as to why you do what you do, and how your marketing could help you achieve your business goals.
What are you marketing buzzkills? Do you LOVE it or loathe it? Tell us! >>