[skyjoe76]

As a start up business, it is very important to keep the marketing cost low. Avoid these costly mistakes that ay burn a hole in your pocket.

1. Try to sell to everybody

This is a disaster. No one can say that their products is suitable for everyone. Everyone may need your product, but not everyone wants it. You need to zoom in to your target market. The most possible market that will buy from you.

2. Inconsistent marketing message

Today you are sending one message to your market, next week you send a different message. You confuse your market, they will lose faith on you.

3. Dependent on one big client

Never depend on just one customer. If that big customer decide to jump ship, you will go sinking. Do not allow your revenue to come from one place only. Diversify. Take good care of the big customer, but continue to source for other customers.

4. Lack of after sales service

Your existing customers are your best customers. It is easier to sell to them than new customers. It is also cheaper to market to your existing customers. Create a system where you can keep in touch with your customers.

5. Selling features instead of selling benefit

Customers are looking for solution. Features say something about the product. Benefits is the solution to their problems. "My product is fully automated" is a feature.
"My product can save you 50% of your time" is a benefit.

6. Lack of good sales script

Many sales are lost because the sales person in your company is not responding or answering the customers enquiries. Have a good script for your salespeople, train them to close sales over the phone.

[TheCDAllenGroup]

^Good post - very true statements there.

[theapprentice]

yup thanks for this

[The Stealthy One]

Great points! Thanks!

[cama-bie]

NIce post thanks mate

[SSM]

I highly do not agree with #6 about having a script for your salespeople. If you go solely on script your team will be stumped by any question that they dont have a scripted answer to. Salespeople dont always use the same technique either. There is a lot of customization in sales and using a script makes them all robots. A recording could simply spit out a scripted sales call.

Change 6 to having a good guideline for the salespersonel to follow and i will agree.

[akula]

good points

here's one I like:

7. Start a business in the first place

With starting a venture, the founder makes a marketing decision on where to best market her skills. Sometimes, by making a decision to start a business, the founder makes a mistake in selecting the startup ecosystem, rather than the job market as the best place where she can get the highest returns for marketing her skills.

Sometimes, the best marketing decision is not to start the venture in the first place.

Fortunately, this is not pessimism. It is only irrational to select the wrong venture in the first place, and then blame everything on subsequent marketing mistakes. I'm a firm believer that the secret to startup success lies not in making "good decisions" but in the avoidance of making "bad decisions".

With startups, often the initial decision to start the venture is a "bad decision" and it is only common sense that no infinite amount of subsequent "good decisions" can turn an originally bad decision into anything else but that.