First, if you don’t know who Seth Godin is then we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Seth is a marketer, writer, and all-around smart guy. He wrote the book Permission Marketing, pens a terrific blog, and generally knows a ton of stuff about entrepreneurs and marketing.
So over at Work Happy, a great blog for entrepreneurs, Seth did this post on the top five mistakes entrepreneurs make when they market. His five mistakes are:
- Expecting gratitude in exchange for having done something that was hard. Yes, you built a company, you might even have bootstrapped it. Yes, you’ve got the machinery and the packaging and the retail space. Yes, you’ve navigated hiring people and yes, you finally shipped. I couldn’t care less. I’m not going to buy your brownie/consulting/services just because you worked hard on it.
- Spending money as a substitute for doing something great. Spending on marketing an average product isn’t working anymore. You’re far better off spending money on making your product better. A lot better.
- Not realizing that it’s your company, and your marketing better be as good as everything else. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like marketing or don’t think you’re good at it. Figure it out or go home. Sooner or later, you succeed because you were able to spread your ideas. So go to school and figure out how it works.
- Listening to other people. If they’re so smart, why aren’t they running your company? Don’t take a poll. Don’t ask your mother-in-law, that’s for sure. Cover your downsides, double your desire to take a risk and then just do it.
- Failure to measure. All this is worthless if you don’t test and measure relentlessly. Do what works. Kill what doesn’t. Repeat.
I think it’s right on the money, especially when it comes to consumer bankruptcy lawyers. We always complain about how our clients don’t appreciate us when we do a good job, or how we find ourselves spending more and more money to market our practices in the same old ways. Seth shows that these are two of the mistakes.
I guess we’re not so different after all. Check out the post and let it sink in.
Photo courtesy of ktpupp.
