Five Places Marketers Fail

When analyzing marketing catastrophes of all different kinds, for companies competing in wildly different industries, some fairly consistent underlying reasons for the failures begin to emerge. And surprisingly, the notion that marketing fails because the marketers in charge were morons is not one of the five. Though there are head-scratchingly bad decisions behind most campaign failures, more insidious reasons are the true propellant behind the epic failures we see in each day's newspaper (if there were still any being published, that is. But that's a marketing failure for another day).

Number Five: The Wrong Market. Sometimes the pressure to eke out just a bit more revenue from an existing but tapped out market drives marketing leaders to try to extend the product line just a bit further or to bring a marginally better solution to the game. All too often, the wrong market is the one in which we currently compete and draw the bulk of our revenue and profits. But in moving forward, a successful and winning leader will know when to make the jump.

Number Four: Bad Timing. Sometimes, however, a marketer's timing is off. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot. But jumping into a new market too soon can mean years of frustrated "market building" activity while other technologies and approaches take their turns at being the "right solution at the right time". Jump too late and you'll face a nigh impenetrably entrenched set of competitors with too little firepower to shift the playing field.

Number Three: The Wrong Strategy. I often say that there is usually more than one way to get to the goal. However, not every path leads there. Some lead straight into the buzz saw. The number of ways in which a strategy might go wrong are legion. Wrong distribution channel for your product? You're dead. Run ads on billboards when a strong internet route is better? Toast. Doesn't necessarily mean the marketer in charge is a moron, but make enough egregious choices and it'll be tough to dodge the nickname.

Number Two: Disconnect Between Promise and Delivery. Imagine you've spec'd the perfect product for your customer's needs. You've built a demand generation strategy second to none. You've got leads pouring in from around the globe. You're a certifiable genius. But then the factory in China burns down. The contract coders from Russia stop returning your emails. Or perhaps operations disregarded your demand forecast because her bonus gets paid on a metric that has nothing to do with satisfying your customers. In any case, this scenario can lead to the very worst outcome for a company - jilted customers. Those whose passions were stirred and then left bitterly unfulfilled.

Number One: Serving the Wrong Master. This one, more than the others, will be likeliest to cause people on the outside to consider the folks at the wheel a bunch of morons. But chances are that the marketers were simply working to please someone other than the actual customer. Perhaps the CEO had a creative idea he loved and wanted to see executed or the senior management council thought they knew better.

The common element among these failures is a loss of focus and mastery of the customer's condition and needs. The ability to translate this knowledge into effecive action is quite common, but the knowledge itself, now that is an all-too-rare commodity. So while marketing groups quibble over effective SEO strategies and approaches to pricing, too few marketing pros are spending quality time with their customers. And that is why they will fail.