There are certain things that should never be done together, like cutting hair and cooking. I am sure there are people who are both a tremendous fry cook and a terrific hair stylist, just not at the same time in the same place, please! I really don’t like hair trimmings in my scrambled eggs!
There are business practices that don’t go together with good marketing. In fact, if you do any of these things and try to convince someone with your marketing that they should be doing business with you, it will have the opposite effect on your target market. It will drive consumers further away from your brand. What are those practices that won’t mix with your marketing? Here is my list.
Bad customer service and marketing
If your customer has had a problem with your products and services and tried to get the issue resolved, only to be ignored, rebuffed and stuck with the problem, I dare you to try to convince him, with your marketing, to become a repeat customer. It will not work! Marketing is designed to build relationships between the consumer and your brand. It is attempting to make customers for life. If you have bad customer service, marketing simply will not work. If you try to do so, you will drive your customers away forever.
Bad quality and marketing
Marketing is constructed to put your best foot forward. It promotes the best characteristics of your products and services so your brand stands for the very best you have to offer. But brands can get a bad reputation, especially when the quality does not measure up to consumers’ expectations. Trying to market a product or service with consistently bad quality is nearly impossible. You cannot talk about how good the product is or how it is desired by lots of people. Who wants junk? Marketing a brand with poor quality always deteriorates into selling it at a cheap price. Do you need marketing to sell cheap?
Under-delivering and marketing
If you are missing the mark on making deadlines, promising features that really don’t work, over-blowing your success and covering up your failures, making marketing claims that counter the reality your customers are experiencing will hurt your brand. We have all seen these types of happy claims that are not based on anything factual. Consumers are not fools! The best marketing that boasts about the greatness of a brand are those that are based on the integrity of the product. You have to back up your marketing claims. Anything beyond the scope of what the brand can actually do risks that integrity. Your marketing will sound more like a con job than a sound business proposition. Hoodwinked customers never come back for more.
Bad pricing and marketing
Much like under-delivering on what your marketing promises, over-charging or up-charging a customer will doom any marketing you try with them. I received an email solicitation the other day from a phone company I used nearly two decades ago. They were forever over-charging me, even though I had a contract with them. I canceled them and swore I would never use them again. (As we severed ties, they charged me a disconnection fee to make sure that was the case!) It has been so long ago, I don’t remember how much they over-charged me, I just remember it happened. Over the years, they have marketed many sweet deals to entice me to resign with them. No way! No amount of marketing will ever cause me to change my mind about them.
Check the way you are doing business. Is there a hair in your scrambled eggs? Fix the problems before you try to market yourself out of trouble. If you don’t do so, you will find that your marketing will do more harm than good.