We were wrong. Just get on any type of public transportation and what do you see? Almost everyone is clearly a prospective iPad customer. Thumbs are going at incredible speed, while others are talking on their cell phones, playing games on a smartphone or watching movies on a hand-held device. And with white earbuds everywhere, it was all about music. Rather than a marketing mistake, bus stops can be a perfect advertising venue for promoting the iPad.

Contrast all this with the huge number of businesses that don’t have a clue about marketing. Feeling desperate to do something, they sign up after hearing the latest sales pitch offering a magical means for getting more customers. Rather than doing nothing, they write a check — and nothing happens.

The truth is that the communication environment is so dynamic today there are no firm marketing answers. This makes it incredibly important to avoid wasting marketing dollars. Here are thoughts that may be useful.

Don’t Get Mauled in the Discount Trap

One of the unintended consequences of the recent recession is a discounting mindset that continues to shape consumer behavior. The Groupon, as well as its imitators, thrives on consumer demand for discount deals and, as might be expected, there are apps for managing them.

One retailer, who had just signed up for a Groupon-type deal, was attending a meeting and constantly checking sales on an iPad. He was only interested in the number of sales, rather than the impact they had on his bottom line, even though the net was rather small.

As a Harvard Business Review article pointed out, “Merchants should be cautious and skeptical about these innovations. Even when sweetened with incentives for repeat purchasers, jazzed up with time- or item-specific discounts, or offered through location-aware mobile devices, all daily deals are simply price promotions…. A steep price promotion can make consumers permanently price sensitive by lowering the reference price they expect to pay, and price promotions can distract customers from products’ benefits, causing irreversible damage to brands.”

Making an intense effort to portray the value of a product or service can create value without cutting the price.

Stay Away From “Ego-Driven” Marketing

When he answered the phone, the owner of a service company was immediately fascinated with the idea of having a 30-second video commercial — not to mention being the “star.” Too much to resist, it was a slam-dunk deal, if there ever was one, even though there was no plan for using it.

When something catches the CEO’s fancy, that’s it, whether or not it has a role to play in the company’s marketing. This can be called “ego-driven marketing.”

In the same way, questions about the purpose of the ad, the message or how it might be used are pushed aside and deliberately ignored.

Failing to have a marketing plan and to spend time thinking through how each component fits into the overall picture is a tragic and costly mistake. It results in wasting valuable marketing dollars.

All Marketing is Individual

The late U.S. House Speaker “Tip” O’Neil held that “all politics is local.” Such advice applies to marketing.

For decades, much of marketing was done with a broad brush: advertise in major daily newspapers, network TV stations and national magazines, and then toss in billboards and direct mail to the mix just to be sure.

By 2000, such an approach was dead and technology threw in the last shovel of dirt. The ability to gather, analyze and use enormous amounts of consumer data has pushed the bar to the point where all marketing is individual.

With companies empowering customers to manage their individual marketing protocols, it’s all about the individual. And will become even more so. Today’s customers aren’t flooded with random marketing messages. The only messages Amazon.com customers receive are those that fit their profile.

The Longer a Company Has Been in Business,
The More It Needs Marketing

This runs contrary to the popular view that the longer a company is in business the less it needs marketing. The assumption is clear: they are well known to their customer and their constituency believes in the brand. Based on that, spending money on marketing is both unnecessary and a waste.

Yet, Coca-Cola, a very old brand, has one of the largest marketing budgets. And what about Heinz ketchup, Levi’s and a host of others?

With companies empowering customers to manage their individual marketing protocols,
it’s all about the individual.

It’s a specious argument if ever there was one, since it’s easy to forget that the longer a company is in business, the greater the need to replace existing customers. It’s also easy to ignore the fact that new competitors come into the picture and many consumers are easily lured by “new and better.”

Without marketing, companies can become “dated” in the minds of even loyal customers.

Basing Decisions on Common Sense is Trouble

In fact, common sense is both untrustworthy and dangerous. “We don’t need to survey our customers,” said the head of the organization, who takes pride in knowing his customers. “If I ask a handful, they’ll tell me what we need to know.” When the issue of continuing attrition is raised, he explains it away with such a “common sense” explanation as a downturn in the economy.

As so many marketing professionals know from bitter experience, it’s difficult to challenge the marketing views of those who are successful in business with facts, since their success serves to “validate” their views. This is why a book by the principal research scientist at Yahoo!, Duncan J. Watts, Ph.D., is valuable in helping to set the record straight. The sub-title to Everything is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer says it clearly: “How Common Sense Fails Us.”

Duncan contends, as Christopher F. Chabris writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Common sense is a shockingly unreliable guide to truth and yet we rely on it virtually to the exclusion of other methods of reasoning.” He points out that relying on common sense puts us in the position of dismissing and rejecting out of hand the objective testing of our decisions — including marketing and sales initiatives. When that happens, it can’t avoid wasting our marketing dollars.

Far too much of today’s marketing is based on what was popular in the past or what worked even a few years ago. These five principles provide guidelines for developing programs that produce positive results instead of wasting money.