PrintPlace.com Blog

When it comes to marketing, marketers aren’t perfect. Gasp! There, I said it. It’s out there. The biggest marketing blunder we make is to assume. Of course, assuming isn’t reserved only to the marketing field. I learned from a young age from my dad that to “assume” meant to make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” Of course, at the time my dad was bestowing this knowledge on me, I was too busy giggling because he said “ass” to understand what it meant. But, as an adult I see it’s quite true.

Marketing Assumptions
Okay, back to marketing assumptions. Why are they so bad? Because if we assume that consumers are visiting our Web site, are getting the info they need out of our brochures and that they are actually reading our postcards, we get lazy. We get satisfied with what we’ve done instead of pushing for more. We rest on our laurels that if something has worked before, it’ll most surely work again.

It’s easy to forget that most of our prospects don’t know the brand we’re trying to promote. Unless we work for McDonald’s, people around the world haven’t heard of us. When we forget this, it’s easy to gloss over basics about our companies and about our brands that we should be communicating to the world.

When we make this assumption, the only “ass” is us.

Sample Blunders
Here are some blatant examples that marketers often make:
• Assuming people will scroll through your email to the bottom to see the important message placed “below the fold”
• Assuming you can make a big sale without setting the stage for a sale
• Assuming people will figure out where to go from your homepage
• Assuming customers will figure “it” out on their own … whatever “it” is

How to Avoid This Mistake
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Appeal to their needs and wants, not yours. Here are some tips to avoid assuming:

Give them benefits first, features later. People are generally looking for a solution when they are shopping. People buy mattresses because theirs gets old and hurts their neck or their back. Give them your benefit of “a good night’s sleep with no back pain in the morning.” Don’t give them “89 springs that are designed by NASA scientists.” Who cares? At this point, people only care about what your product can do for them.

Give them the meat and potatoes first. Get rid of the fluff, or the salad, if you will, in all of your marketing materials. Put the good stuff first. The benefits, the offer and the info the customer needs to take advantage of your offer. Get rid of the introductory warm-up and dive right in to why people should buy from you. Don’t waste their time.

Give your message to your audience in the way they want it. Teens love text messaging. If you market to teens, text message them. Text messaging to senior citizens on the other hand, won’t work quite as well. For that audience, you’ll need to advertise in newspapers or on television. If you don’t reach your audience in their preferred medium, you might never reach them at all.