The web is a tangled jungle teeming with conflicting information on marketing. Whether we’re talking about the effectiveness of traditional media in our contemporary digital age, or the relevance of social media in our rapid fire society, or even trying to find out a little more about what marketing is, you’ve got to watch that you’re not stumbling into a trap.
We’ve heard it all. So we thought we’d take a look at some of the common myths of marketing to help you straighten it all out.
- Any marketing is better than no marketing.
Oscar Wilde hit the mark when he said ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. But marketing costs money. The object of marketing is about more than just throwing a campaign out to an audience and waiting for a response. Any campaign format should be well researched, suitably targeted, and produce substantial return-on-investment (ROI).
- You can never use the same campaign twice
The idea behind this common marketing myth is understandable: if you constantly recycle your campaigns, your target market will become bored with them. In truth, the only time you really need to change up your campaign message or format is when it is no longer producing the desired results, or you discover a formula that produces even better results.
Effective marketing campaign formats can be used over the period of years. There is nothing wrong with consistently using a tried and tested formula, so long as it remains relevant to your market and produces the desired ROI.
Nothing is static in our tumultuous age, either. Your target market will always be gaining and losing members. A recycled campaign format will be brand new to a customer that has not responded in the past.
- The purpose of marketing is to sell a product or a service
The myth that a marketer’s job is to sell a product or service is an ode to the out-dated ONE-WAY marketing approach. One-way communication meant that a marketer would simply send a product or service centric message out into the marketplace and wait for a response from the audience without truly engaging. This passive approach ceased to be effective decades ago with the rise of the proactive consumer (prosumer) meant that customers are far more informed and involved about their purchasing behaviour. Contemporary marketing methods have evolved to accommodate a two-step communication process.
Two-step communication includes a range of strategies that marketers use to engage with their audience, rather than broadcast to it. Two-step communication is all about generating prospects and teaching your target market to know, like, and trust your brand. It encourages long-term loyal relationships with customers, leading to greater ROI and unlimited opportunities to concert sales over time.
- Good advertising can make a bad product successful
This myth is unfounded due to that little buzzword we used before: ‘prosumer’. The classic passive consumer is a rare animal in today’s marketplaces. Your customers are more informed, more proactive, and more wary than ever before.
The key to successful marketing lies in a few key commandments:
Customers want products and services that deliver exactly what they promise.
Customers want products and services that are fairly priced.
Customers want to buy from brands that they know and trust.
Sure, maybe you’ve created a bedazzling campaign around your bad product. Maybe it will be effective in first-time sales. But customers don’t like brands that don’t deliver what they promise, and the moment you under-deliver, you’ve lost a valuable customer relationship.
Moreover, word-of-mouth (WOM) referrals are more important than ever with the prominence of social media and customer review websites. You’ve probably heard that other marketing myth that a customer is more likely to spread a poor product review than a good one. Well, that myth is actually true in our experience. WOM referrals will become your worst enemy in no time at all.