Marketing Mistakes
by Dera DeRoche-Jolet

Does your company stand out as the alarm company of choice in your community? Market your company the right way and you will distinguish yourself from your competitors. Market your company the wrong way and customers and prospects will come to their own conclusions. Most likely their opinions will be inaccurate and even wrong. Worse, they might not even think of your company at all. In other words, you must do everything you can to have your customers and prospects see your company as the only company they want to do business with.

Facing off on the battlefield and going head-to-head with your competitors day after day isn't the solution. Trying to get your foot in the door by resorting to price cutting is self-defeating. It's also impossible to beat the competition to the sale by being every place at the right moment. That's why marketing is so important.

Many companies rely on useless, unenthusiastic, unimaginative and dull marketing efforts. Some even have a marketing department, but when it comes down to it, they aren't "marketing" their company and its products and services, but grasping at straws. Knowing the mistakes can keep you from making them. Here are five frequent marketing mistakes many businesses make:

They have no plan at all. The most common marketing plan is no plan at all. Many businesses who are sophisticated in every other way, fail in this area. They may say they have a marketing plan, but it's really just lip service. They believe they are effectively marketing their services by doing a mailing now and a couple of ads twice a year. Some say they publish a newsletter to keep their customers and prospects informed. Ask them when the last time they published an issue was and they aren't sure.

Marketing requires a carefully conceived plan. Changes often must be made to the plan, but if you don't know where you want to go, your "plan" and your company will never go anywhere.

They "market" only when they need to increase sales. Companies often spend their money on marketing when sales are slow because they do not have a marketing strategy. They panic, and miraculously find the money to do a newsletter or send out a mailing. They don't know what they should put in the newsletter or what should be said in the direct mail piece, but they feel something is better than nothing. Often, before anything happens, the emergency passes, other "emergencies" loom on the horizon and the marketing gets put aside until the next crisis.

They copy what the competition is doing. Knowing what your competition is doing is part of a good marketing plan. Copying what a competitor is doing without asking if what the competitor is doing is at all effective, is foolish. If nothing else, you are certainly not distinguishing yourself from your competition in anyone's mind.

They avoid quality design and printing. Although you may not be able to tell a book by its cover, that's the first impression people receive. If your marketing materials look like junk mail, guess what your prospects will do with it? That's right, directly into the trash. If you have a quality company, then show it to people with a quality presentation.

They expect a miracle. It's not that they really expect a miracle, but they're too naive to know better. They send out a mailing and picture a mad rush to the phone from just about everyone on the mailing list. There is no thought given to the content of the mailing piece, the quality of the mailing list, or the needs of the customers or prospects. When a miracle doesn't happen, someone will say, "I told you marketing doesn't work. If sales worked harder, we would have more business and we wouldn't be wasting our money."

If your company is guilty of any of these marketing mistakes, you're wasting your time, effort and money. Marketing is too important to be ignored or seen as meaningless. Market your company the right way and it will stand out as the alarm company of choice in your community.