21 Ways to Screw Up Your Business
From Drayton Bird (Direct Marketing legend) -
- Ignore the lessons of the past. Why do people assume they didn’t know as much 100 years ago? Education was certainly more demanding.
- Think you can pick it up as you go along. Marketing is infested with amateurs. Hardly anyone studies enough. Crazy.
- Try to be “creative”. It is almost certainly fatal to assume that what you think is wonderful will sell. You are not your customer.
- Have too many meetings. They are almost all a waste of time, there for idle people to fill up their time.
- Not try being a customer. As Jack Welch remarked, most people have their heads facing the chairman and their asses facing the customers.
- Hire a Marketing Director without looking at his past record. This is why so many are duds.
- Fall for the latest fad. Marketers are suckers for the silver bullet. CRM, SEO, PPC, SMS, Social media - they always think some new thing will substitute for the need to think.
- Believe human nature is altered by media or changing times. Human nature has not changed since men started walking upright.
- Assume business decisions are made logically. They're not. People are ruled by their emotions, in every area of life.
- Get up your own arse over brand guidelines. This is especially true of typefaces which are rarely suited for letter, to take one example.
- Talk like a marketing person. You will bore and confuse everybody, including yourself.
- Try to make it perfect. You have to do it as well as you can in the time available, then let go.
- Believe anyone who says they can make you rich. They are almost all liars - especially on the internet.
- Assume your prospect is intelligent. Very few are; and even they are not thinking when exposed to marketing messages.
- Assume your prospect is stupid. They may not be brilliant, but they are not halfwits either, and resent being patronised.
- Read about nothing but marketing. It is a very dull, narrow subject and will limit your imagination.
- Fail to test. Perhaps the biggest and most common mistake around. Nobody has any idea what will work. Why guess when you can know?
- Imagine everything will be OK. Assume something will go wrong; it usually does.
- Spend more energy imagination and money on prospects than customers. Madness. Your best source of profit is the customer you've got, not the one you want.
- Assume anything is always, or never the case. There are exceptions to all rules; circumstances alter cases, as the legal maxim goes.
- Fail to invest in your staff. They are the only ones who can make it happen for you. Train them. Be nice to them.