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The Single Biggest Mistake Made by Marketers

September 7, 2011

As small business owners, we can make many marketing mistakes.  However, there is one mistake that can starve your business.  Its a mistake Judy Murdoch calls,”The single biggest marketing mistake.  Enjoy this post by Judy as she uses a cheese and mice metaphor to describe the biggest marketing mistake.

The Single Biggest Mistake Made by Marketers

 

 

 

 

I see this mistake all the time in the marketplace and it absolutely ruins the effectiveness
of otherwise well-crafted promotions. To learn whether you’re making this mistake and
how to fix it, read on.

 A True Story

A company specializing in direct mail promotion was interested in offering a special
“birthday club” service to their restaurant customers. Here’s how the birthday club
service worked:

The restaurant would send a list containing customer names and birth dates to the
direct mail company

A week or so prior to a particular customer’s birthday, the direct mail company would
send a postcard to the customer saying something like, “Don’s Steakhouse wishes you
a happy birthday. Bring this postcard in on your birthday and enjoy a free appetizer
(or dessert, etc.)

The idea is the restaurant gets more business because of course customers
celebrating their birthdays are still going to pay for their dinner and drinks. And of
course they are unlikely to be dining alone. In fact they may bring lots of friends and
family along to help them celebrate. So it’s likely a good money maker for the
restaurant.

The direct mail company charges a fee for this service so it’s a money maker for them
as well.

So far so good?

The direct mail promoter proceeded to send an email to all their restaurant customers
informing them of their birthday club service.

The email they sent was pretty typical saying something along the lines of “Hi, we’re XYZ
company and we want you to know about a great new service we’re offering.” The email
then listed the features of the birthday club program (how it worked, what was included
on the card, pricing, etc.) and closed with “To learn more about this great opportunity
click here” along with a link to their website’s sales page.

They didn’t get a single response.

So they rethought their strategy and sent a new email to all their restaurant customers.

It was a simple email that basically said, “Do you do birthday parties?”

This time about 80% of the prospects receiving the email responded.

 All About Cheese

The reason one promotion fell flat on its face while the other succeeded brilliantly may
seem obvious to you but I want to make a point here because quite often we forget to
apply what is obvious.

Let’s begin with an analogy: mice

Mice have two simple prime directives in life:

Directive #1: Cheese is good
Directive #2: Cats are bad

For a mouse to have a happy life they try to get as much cheese as they can and to avoid
cats as much as possible.

Now human beings are a lot more sophisticated than mice, right? But people are still
pretty much motivated in a way that is similar to mice:

Directive #1: We want more good stuff in our lives… we want more of what is fulfilling
and pleasurable

Directive #2: We want less bad stuff in our lives … less pain, frustration, boredom, etc.

So it would make sense that if you want to sell something you would tell your audience
that buying your product will lead to getting more good stuff. Your marketing should be
all about the cheese right?

But that’s Not What Most Marketing Does!

So let’s return to the example we started with, the email sent by the direct mail company.

What did most of that email focus on? It focused on them, the seller!

Now that may not seem like a big deal. In fact there’s a logic to this approach because in
a face-to-face meeting or presentation, it’s customary to introduce yourself and say a
little about who you are and what you do.

But an email isn’t a face to face meeting! There is minimal non verbal communication.
You have only your words and perhaps an image or two to get the interest and attention
of your prospect.

You have the headline and perhaps the first sentence to get your reader’s interest and
attention. Or else Goodbye.

From your reader’s perspective when you talk about yourself what are you talking about?

Your reader thinks “They want me to buy something.” From your reader’s perspective
what are you most like, the cheese of the cat?”

The cat! Your audience sees whiskers.

Even though there is cheese in the offer it’s buried below all the verbiage about you and
your company.

No matter how hungry a mouse may be, it’s going to stay away as long as there’s a cat
between them and the cheese.

Remember your reader needs to see the cheese right away.

 Your Marketing Needs to Offer Cheese Right Away

OK, so you’ve got the point by now, your marketing needs cheese and in a way so that
the cheese is the very first thing your audience sees.

However, your current marketing may still have more whiskers than cheese.

Three Steps to More Cheese

To improve your marketing’s cheese to whiskers ratio, I recommend these three steps:

#1. Pick a current offer

Looking at your marketing, choose an offer you want to get a better response to. For
example, an email you use to promote a program or a sales page on your website.

#2. Do a “Cheese Audit”

Read through your offer and look at how many ideas or points are cheese versus whiskers.
Also notice where the cheese appears? Throughout? At the very end? Only at the beginning?

#3. Make over your offer by adding cheese

Ideally you want cheese throughout your offer and you only have whiskers at the very end.

Bottom Line

One of the biggest mistakes I see marketers make is creating a marketing message that
is all about them–not their customers. It makes all the difference between an offer that
succeeds versus an offer that fails.

The good news is this is a relatively easy problem to correct and once corrected, you
begin to benefit right away.
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=5zZNS&m=JToKBQV.eP4Xuf&b=X53DRjjsiMjtlSVeZlCkDg
My best to you and your business.

Judy Murdoch
http://highlycontagiousmarketing.com

P.S. I got the “cheese and whiskers” metaphor and the beginning story from Dean
Jackson’s I Love Marketing podcast. To listen to the “More Cheese; Less Whiskers”
podcast, go to http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=5zZNS&m=JToKBQV.eP4Xuf&b=jcWNunq1DjrF4zslL48FTQ

Please share your thoughts and comments on this marketing mistake in the Comment Section be.  Thank you.

Al Hanzal,
View more posts by Al Hanzal

Filed under: Business Planning,Entrepreneurship,Marketing