If you’d like to run a marketing campaign that will bring you meaningful results, you need to have a firm grasp of the foundations of marketing. Without it, you might very well burn through your marketing budget without having achieved anything, at all.
Unfortunately, it’s also easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that you need to absorb.
This becomes especially frustrating when you’re working on a tight deadline or against a relentless competition, leading to some beginners to fall into well-known traps that are the stuff of nightmares for their more experienced counterparts.
Some of these qualities have become so common that they’ve morphed into a living stereotype. These are the extreme caricatures of marketers that you see on TV who are the butt of jokes from the audience.
Unfortunately, while they tend to be exaggerated on the screen, it’s very common to find them on a subtler level on the street and online.
The reason why these characters are so popular is that they’re true, and while you may think you’re immune from devolving into such a hot mess, you’ll soon find yourself in a whole lot of trouble if you’re not careful.
Without further ado, here are the three marketing personas that every marketer should avoid turning into:
Persona 1: The used car salesman
In popular media, this guy comes in the form of a man wearing a cheap suit and smelling of even cheaper cologne. The customer walks in and he immediately hooks them with sleek sounding buzzwords like “good mileage” and “tried but never used.”
All the while, the client’s internal alarm is sounding off because of the artificial nature of the sale.
Manifestations of this persona are readily seen in even the most seasoned entrepreneurs.
Movie and video game marketers, for example, present all the best parts of the film or game in a short trailer coupled with bombastic music and visual effects. Customers are impressed and soon purchase the product, expecting to experience the same sensual overload that they saw in the teaser.
They are quickly disappointed as reality sets in.
The main problem of the used car salesman is that he mistakes substance with spectacle.
When marketing your product, never attempt to aggrandize the benefits of your services far beyond what it can deliver.
This includes using overly positive but vague language (i.e., “it can change your life”), unnecessary glitz that have nothing to do with the item (i.e., scantily clad women as models), and cheap tricks that play to a customer’s base instincts (i.e., “limited time only” scheme).
The solution: Be honest. If the product is worthwhile, let it speak for itself. Present the advantages of the item as clearly and straightforwardly as possible. You may not get that many customers in the short run, but they’ll be more durable and loyal. Over time, as word gets out, your base will naturally grow.
Persona 2: The wannabe messiah
Ever since Steve Jobs patented his brash, often messianic marketing style, people have been copying it in droves.
The biggest difference is that Steve Jobs had good reason to be proud of himself: Apple computers revolutionized the industry, especially the smartphone department.
On the other hand, a lot of amateur entrepreneurs nowadays thinks that what they have to offer is the next sliced bread, and when people pass on it, they get offended and chalk it up to the lack of sophistication on the public.
Remember, the market is often the best judge of character, and it doesn’t discriminate. If customers aren’t patronizing your store, then it doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of understanding your vision — there’s a good chance that your product is awful.
Take a humbler approach to life. Ask people what they don’t like about your service, and then do your best to improve it. You’d be surprised to find out how many of them will give you good feedback — the likes of which that can take your business to greater heights.
This is especially true for people who are offering creative services — like those who design logos. Even the top logo designers, at some point, had designs that weren’t viewed by the public as uber-exceptional. And yet, these designers continue to improve and persevere — which ultimately led to them high-paying contracts.
When you have the humility to ask people for feedback, you gain an unfair advantage over your competitors who don’t have the same level of humility.
It is often those who are humble enough to ask other people for ideas who learn more about their audience, which makes them a prolific marketer or business owner.
Persona 3: The people pleaser
On another end of the spectrum is a marketer who does not know the true value of his product and will bend over just to please everyone.
This is often used for comedic effect in most films, as the hapless entrepreneur is taken for granted and pushed around by opportunists who spend far less money on him than his creation deserves.
Of course, most business owners tend to have the opposite problem, but selling yourself short is still a reality for some, especially beginners.
When you’re first starting out, it’s hard to gauge how much you should value your services, and because of fear that they might not be able to deliver what they promise, amateur marketers will undersell and overcompensate.
This is a common mistake that leads to diminished sales and profits.
There is a phenomenon in marketing where customers are actually lost rather than gained as the price of a product plummets past a certain point, because overly cheap products are automatically construed as having inferior quality (so-called Veblen goods).
Trying to be a people pleaser and marketing your business in a way that doesn’t do it justice will win you no favors. Misjudged humility is nothing more than cowardice.
Whether you’re selling yourself short or you’re publishing fake reviews to make your business look better than it really is, you should know that both won’t do you any good.
You need to be honest and confident in your service Whether or not it meets people’s expectations remains to be seen, but at least you’ll rest easy knowing that you put your best self on the table.
Conclusion
These marketing personas might give us a light chuckle, but try to avoid morphing into one of them in your forays in business.
If you are honest in delivering the benefits of your product, are accurate in estimating your service’s true value, and above all, study the best practices in business, then you’re pretty much on your way to growing your business.
Now, go out and start selling!
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Managing the CX demands of 5 generations … new eBook – TheMarketingblog https://t.co/8jNKUb1aX4
— Will Corry (@slievemore) November 22, 2019