Potential Mistake that Marketing Teams Should Avoid

The biggest mistake that I have seen a lot of marketers starting to make is that they fall in the trap of following experts at the cost of not following their customers/prospects.

We all know that marketing as a function is going through a transformation. Some buzz words and trends that you may have noticed that are playing out in the marketing world are:

• Social Media Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Paid/earned content and many many more.

CMO’s are now being forced to understand technology and work closely with their technology peers (CIO’s or CTO’s).

And there are some really good experts around all these topics, who are so convincing about the topics that they specialize in and can convince you that unless you as a marketing team are not active in their area of expertise you are missing the boat.

Marketing teams should not get carried away by all these transformative forces and the expert speak.

We should not forget the core function of marketing is still to move your customers or prospects through the AIDA phases. This means that the marketing team still needs to keep their customers at the center of everything that they want to do.

This then means that

• If your customers are not active on social media, you need not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on creating and maintaining social presence just because experts say that is the most important thing to do.
• If your customers are already congregating on a specific channel, you go to them and interact with them there, instead of trying to get them to come over to where you are (your site, facebook page, YouTube channel, etc).
• Ensure that all activities (content, social, traditional) should be intentional.

Have you also committed this mistake or know of someone who has committed this information? Do share your story.