Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of marketing executions every day in retail shopping environments, online or via TV, radio or print media. The aim of the game is to attract attention for a product, brand or service and try and convince that target market to taken an action of some type.
Although, sometimes brands come up with really poor marketing executions that makes you wonder why they chose that course of action to execute their marketing activities.
WHAT IS MARKETING EXECUTION?
Marketing can be executed in hundreds of different ways these days with the new worlds of digital marketing and social media creating lots of different ways to reach consumers. Small, medium and large brands around the world are making decisions on their marketing executions every day of the week whether it’s something as simple as what to post on social media for the week or trying to come up with new packaging ideas. There are so many different tasks you can perform to deliver your chosen marketing strategies.
One of the hardest things to execute well from a marketing perspective is a website. Unlike placing an advertisement in a magazine which, in its simplest form, requires filling a space with text and imagery, getting a fluid, digital presence working well is more difficult because of the broader complexities involved. There are a mix of technical requirements but you are also competing 24/7 for space amongst millions of other sites daily with constant changes taking place every day.
So you might have a marketing team member who is a brilliant creator of advertising but it may not translate to other mediums so well.
WHY WAS THIS BRAND'S MARKETING EXECUTION SO POOR?
BRANDS SHOULD CONSIDER THE PERCEPTION ANY EXECUTION CAN CREATE
THAT HEADLINE
Well you might be thinking that is very theoretical but what does it mean in practice?
The other week I had to find a replacement battery for my digital camera so I began searching online to see what was available as I wanted to compare the OEM brands to what 3rd party products were available. For my first searches all the common places showed up like Digital Camera Warehouse, JB Hi Fi, eBay, Amazon etc and because I knew the model and part number it was relatively easy to find a price and stock availability.
Although, then I stumbled across Battery World who is a franchised brand who apparently had a range of batteries that was;
“so big we couldn’t fit all online”
You can imagine my reaction right? I had to pause and think about it for a second and then had a chuckle. Sure, maybe their marketing team thought it was cute or funny but, I just had the thought of how lazy or silly the brand was. Here I am searching online and I can find info quickly from other sources and yet a specialist in the space hasn’t taken the time to sort out their online strategies?
To put it in perspective, the internet has unlimited space in a sense and online marketplaces like Amazon or eBay sell millions of items around the world everyday, so it isn’t like there are technical difficulties to achieve it. So their statement has no credibility & from a consumer’s perspective
HOW CAN THIS KILL A BRAND'S CREDIBILITY?
FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT FOR ANY CONSUMER
Ok, so can I justify my statement that it kills their brand credibility?
To put this scenario into perspective;
- The internet has “unlimited space” in many respects.
- Online marketplaces like Amazon or eBay sell millions of items around the world everyday, so it isn’t like there are technical difficulties to achieve getting thousands of items listed for sale on a website.
- Their competitors had achieved it & I have already seen their offerings.
- They had put some items on their website.
So by this stage, from my perspective, they had lost all credibility & I wasn’t prepared to waste my time on the phone with them. If their online marketing execution was so poor, how bad would their phone service be, plus I’d be paying for the privilege of calling them to get information they have either been not prepared to or too lazy to get online.
It’s a harsh call, but you have to keep in perspective that people are time poor these days and there are hundreds of alternative information sources, so as a brand or business you only have one chance to get it right. Their situation is probably made more difficult by their franchisee structure which would mean locally there is different pricing per store, although in this day and age that is a difficult position to maintain.
WHAt COULD They HAVE DONE INSTEAD?
HOW CAN A BRAND IMPROVE THEIR MARKETING EXECUTION
Fair enough it is easy to pick up marketing mistakes, but what could the approach have been to solve the situation?
- Use the range quantity has a positive marketing message but make it easier to access an answer by providing a simple enquiry form rather than just a phone number.
- Offer a guaranteed enquiry response rate to give confidence that a question will be answered.
- Provide online chat to answer questions or get pricing.
- If the business was working on an eCommerce solution then consider being upfront about it and letting people know but then give them alternatives to quickly get information.
- Remove any phrasing or sentences that shows up an inability to execute something so that visitors have a positive initial experience.
The longer lasting effect is that I probably wouldn’t consider them again.
