According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 out of 10 new businesses close in the first year of operation, and 9 out of 10 startups fail (Startup Genome data). Despite entrepreneurs’ colossal motivation and a strong urge to make a great product, they often make mistakes that could have been avoided.

You came up with a new product and decided to launch it on the market right away. At the same time, you have no idea of the market needs and your target market. If the market is declining, your project has a chance to go down at the start.

EXAMPLE: The launch of a mobile-video platform, Quibi, was a big failure, despite high expectations and impressive investments. Between Warner Bros, Lionsgate, MGM, and more investors, the streaming platform has raised around $1.8 billion overall.

In addition, the company was managed by the magnate and former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg. With those resources came great promises to rock the market for streaming television. Quibi wanted to compete with TikTok, YouTube, and other popular services.

How could Quibi fail? A complete misunderstanding of their consumers and the trends of the market.

Have you launched an ad campaign, but no one clicks on the banners? Most likely, there is an issue with defining the audience and communication.

EXAMPLE: When the Refocus team launched its marketing agency, they promoted the product on the U.K. market — the installment card. [credit card.] “With no doubt, we decided that the product would be most in-demand among girls, simply because they love shopping and often make expensive purchases. It was a big failure, so we lost hundreds of thousands of pounds [dollars] in the ad campaign.”

“Realizing our mistake, we decided to do a deep research — CustDev. It turned out that the most relevant audience segment is men 35-45 years old. So, unfortunately, we spent a lot of money and time running irrelevant ads.”

Marketing should be flexible: if you understand that something goes wrong, you should find a solution and change the situation ASAP.

Marketing changes all the time. So you need to keep an eye on trends and develop your creativity. Your creatives should be eye-catchy; otherwise, you will lose all your budget with no profit.

EXAMPLE: Hoof Doctor provides hoof care and farrier products for horses. The company launched the ad campaign with a product review video from its customers. In this video, the man spoke about the advantages of the product and his experience. It wasn’t a scripted video. Instead, it was spontaneous with an imperfect speech from a real customer who bought the product. This video increased the level of trust among the target audience.

You can have great marketing, but it’s pointless if your sales funnel isn’t so great. A poorly elaborated sales funnel leads to money wasted. What could go wrong? For example, a client opens a website, sees it’s not mobile-friendly, and the call to action (CTA) button isn’t working.

How often have you left a request or feedback on a website but never got an answer?

One of the most serious and expensive mistakes entrepreneurs and marketers make is the lack of a system for collecting and analyzing data on marketing effectiveness. As a result, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

EXAMPLE: The online store of German premium cosmetics, Phyris, initially chose cosmetologists as the main segment of the target audience. The company focused on communication on the texture and the effect of creams — functional JOBS. The conversion rate was very low.

After getting CustDev, they realized that their customers pay a lot of attention to cosmetics packaging. Owners of Phyris didn’t expect that having a beautiful cream in the bathroom is essential for their audience.

When a guest sees aesthetic jars in the bathroom, they think that the person who uses them is in another league. The social JOB turned out to be more important than the functional one.

So they began to use images of jars in premium interiors in ad creatives and add better infographics on the product card. The advertising campaign paid off perfectly, and the company received several million. The conversion rate increased four times.

In his book Business The Speed Of Thought, Bill Gates wrote: “Learning from mistakes and constantly improving products is a key in all successful companies.”

Don’t be afraid of mistakes — they happen to everybody. If something is wrong with marketing — dig deeper, find the problem and fix it.

You don’t have to wait until all the budget is wasted and gone, and it’s too late to make a difference.

Image Credit: Internal article photos provided by the author. Thank you!

Top Image Credit: by Alena Darmel; Pexels; Thank you!

Source: ReadWrite

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