5 Marketing Myths

Marketing and sales are frequently confused within businesses, so let’s be clear – marketing is about educating people and raising brand awareness, so when they are ready to buy they have a greater affinity for you compared to a competitor.  Sales focuses on the very act of turning people into customers and while it may take advantage of marketing, it has its own, very well-defined techniques which aim to persuade the one individual to buy.
Perhaps, this is the first myth to be busted – sales is not the same as marketing – but for our purposes, here are our 5 Marketing Myths:

The Lowest Priced Product or Service Wins!

Using low pricing should result in more sales, that’s intuitive and plain common sense!  It may be true in certain instances, especially where your product is viewed by customers as a commodity, i.e. a good which can easily be substituted for another, e.g. gas, sugar, bottled water, orange juice.
Ronson made cigarette lighters in the fifties which initially used a a low-price strategy to compete with Japanese imports.  This was a big mistake – Ronson quality was far superior to anything produced in Japan at that time and with a change in direction, pricing was adjusted to a level far higher.  Sales increased, both in unit volume and dollar revenue with the price rise and this is clearly counter to intuitive logic.  The reason for this was the high cost of the lighters improved the perception of consumers about the quality.  This underlines the reason behind why low-cost pricing increases sales is a myth – it is customer perception which determines whether the product is purchased, and for many, a higher-priced product is equated with a better quality product.

Offer a Broad Range of Products and Services to Win Business
Myth #2 – to effectively market your products you need to be tightly focused on delivering a solution for the customer’s needs.  Building a large product or service range will dilute your marketing efforts, rendering your business less effective when it comes to making actual sales.  Stick to a small, or even single product range to maximize the benefit from your marketing investment.
The Best Advertizing Comes from the Top!
The stereotype image of senior ad executives coming up with a great ad campaign may be the industry image, and reality for many companies.
This is why so much marketing you see is really dire!
The best advertizing comes from your customers and for practical purposes, from your customer-facing sales people.  Find out what your customers are actually looking for – what problems and needs they have and develop your marketing strategy around satisfying those needs.  The best advertizing comes from the bottom and it is the most effective and directly relevant to your customers.
The Best Product or Service is the Most Successful!
If this was true, we all would be reading this using a Mac but, chances are you are reading this online using a PC.  There are plenty of other examples – VHS video tapes beat out the competition from Betamax despite delivering inferior recording and playback quality; Chrysler is now owned by Fiat who make much more inferior cars; Five Guys make a much better burger than McDonalds, and the list goes on.
The product or service which is the most successful is the one which is most effectively marketed and sold.  Specifically, this means aligning your offering to customer needs, desires and aspirations, and doing it better than anyone else.

Increasing Web Traffic is the Best Way to Increase Online Sales!
It sounds right doesn’t it?  Like many marketing myths, it is based on intuition because it seems like common sense.  The truth is that it is easier, cheaper and more immediate to improve your conversion ratios with your existing web traffic to increase sales.  You can do this by improving your online payment process, creating a greater sense of trust and confidence in your product and business, offering price comparison tools on-site and a range of other techniques.
It is easier to sell to existing traffic than it is to sell to someone who has not even visited your store!


This article was written by BS Free Marketing.