by Nora Foster

As the managing director of a marketing firm and a marketing copywriter, I see horrible marketing every day. Here are the three most common mistakes I see businesses make with their marketing, which causes it to fail.

Marketing mistake 1:
Not focusing on a niche market that really needs and wants what you are selling. To be successful in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, you absolutely must focus your marketing on serving a specialized niche market. This is especially true and a matter of survival if you have a small marketing budget.

If you ignore this advice and try to market to a large general market before first becoming the market leader in at least one or two small niche markets, I can guarantee that you will go broke and then go out of business. However, if you do decide to focus on serving a small niche market, you greatly increase your odds for business success with far less financial risk.

Marketing mistake 2:
Focusing on features instead of benefits. A feature explains a fact about what a product does such as a specification. For example, the new ZZ car has anti-lock brakes. That is a fact about the car - it has anti-lock brakes. The problem with only listing a feature is that a feature does not explain how it benefits a person. Why would you want a car with anti-lock brakes? The answer to that question is the benefit. Anti-lock brakes are much safer because they keep your tires from locking up and skidding so you don't lose control of your car. Therefore, if you drive a car that has anti-lock brakes, you are less likely to be in a car accident and killed. The benefit is the positive end result. People buy benefits, not features. Therefore, in your marketing, you absolutely must focus on benefits instead of features. The more powerful you can make your benefits, the more successful your marketing will be.

Marketing mistake 3:
Not marketing on a consistent basis. At any given time, a market will only have about 1-3% of its population interested in buying your product or service. For example, let’s say you are a home remodeling contractor and you meet with 100 home owners. On any given day only about 1-3 people may be interested in buying your home remodeling services. That means up to 99% will not be interested in buying your product or service right now. However, in a week, a month, or a year, they may be ready to buy because their needs have changed. If you are only doing your marketing on a one-time basis, you are missing out on 99% of the market that may buy from you in the future. That is why you must consistently market to your target market month after month forever.

If you are going to market with sales letters, send out sales letters to your contact list every single month. Many of your prospects may have to receive your sales letter 6-12 times or more before they will be ready to buy from you. If you advertise in a trade publication, advertise every single month. Many people will need to see your advertisement over the course of several months (or years) before they will be in the market to buy from you. If you advertise on the radio, don’t run your ads for a month and stop. Keep running them month after month. Think of marketing as out of sight, out of mind. If you are not constantly marketing to your marketplace so your name and the benefits of your product or service is in fresh in their minds, they will forget about you very quickly and buy from the company that is consistently marketing to them.

Nora Foster is founder and lead consultant of MKTG Consulting, a Boston-based consortium of multi-disciplinary marketing and business consultants.