Common Marketing Mistakes That Your Business Should Avoid
Marketing is expensive, but it’s a necessary expense. There are a few key things to remember to make sure your marketing is achieving its objective.
We advise clients that marketing is roughly 33 percent of the recipe for success. However, experience shows that it is easy to give marketing a much larger percentage of the blame when things aren’t great, and a much smaller percentage of the success when things are good. Staffing, inventory and market conditions also have the ability to create large swings in your business.
There are several ways to help minimize marketing waste and increase the effectiveness of your ads. Here are five tips to help get you started.
1. Say Something. Telling your customer how long you’ve been in business isn’t a marketing message. “Your dealer of choice since 1958” doesn’t really inspire action, does it? Tell your customer what you want from them. Say “Click here to learn more” or “Claim your savings voucher now”…drive action with your message.
2. Use your data. First-party data is the most powerful data. Your CRM is a resource that you should use to create target audiences. Not just targeting customers who’ve done business with you, but using that data to find more customers with similar characteristics to your existing customers. And now with HITCH ID, we can target customers shopping on your website that haven’t identified themselves.
3. Simple Creative. The desire to have super clean images and pretty fonts is fine. However, many times when we A/B test creative with the same messaging, we find that the creative that resonates the best is authentic and the graphics are simple. For example, when saying 0% financing for 60 months the ads that say 0% for 60 mo outperform ads that spell it out.
4. Don’t be late to market. For most retail businesses, there are 26 selling days in a month. If your marketing efforts don’t launch until the 5th, 6th, or 7th of the month, you’re losing 20% of the month!!! Getting out of the gate is crucial to maximizing the limited number of selling days you have.
5. Educate your team. Effective communication about what ads are running, what offers are being made, and the details of how the offers work are key in helping your sales team answer customer questions and speak intelligently. A well-informed sales team will help put your customers at ease and make it easier to break down barriers and convert prospects into buyers.
