Marketing is a key part of any business that helps connect customers to your product or service and increases your bottom line. But even the most experienced marketers on your team may have developed bad habits throughout the years that hurt your business.
Whether trying every new tool or taking on too many projects at once, some bad common practices persist among many professionals in the industry. To that end, 11 Young Entrepreneur Council members share some common bad habits they’ve seen in marketing and what you can do to change them.
11 Bad Habits Every Marketing Professional Should Break
- Repeating the same strategy.
- Measuring the wrong data.
- Forgetting to mention customer benefits.
- Committing to too many projects.
- Communicating ineffectively with teammates.
- Multitasking to increase productivity.
- Trying every new tool.
- Skipping the brainstorming process.
- Focusing too much on vanity metrics.
- Living in the past.
- Failing to team up with other departments.
1. Repeating the Same Strategy
Using the same strategy to solve every single problem is a bad habit. Recognizing complexities in today's business world is critical for a strategic approach. Digital marketing is changing the game rapidly, and marketers should evolve with the market demands. — Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME
2. Measuring the Wrong Data
Marketers tend to like the same old data. Not utilizing the latest in analytics is a mistake. There are many metrics that pertain to different areas of marketing and brand building that can be incredibly useful for building new campaigns. Do a data deep dive and find metrics that truly matter to campaigns and brands. — Matthew Capala, Alphametic
3. Forgetting to Mention Customer Benefits
A lot of marketers focus on selling their products, but very few talk about an essential part — how their product will improve the lives of end users. Customers don’t care about a long list of features unless they know how each one will affect them. You can resolve this issue by putting customer benefits first when writing blog posts, social media announcements, emails or landing pages. — John Turner, SeedProd LLC
4. Committing to Too Many Projects
One major bad habit most marketing professionals have is taking on far too many projects. Marketing people are creatives by nature and love a good project that drives new interests. They’re also ambitious and want to do as much as possible to make money for themselves or the company. Those qualities lead to significant over-commitment. — Baruch Labunski, Rank Secure
5. Communicating Ineffectively With Teammates
Many marketers don’t consider communicating effectively with their teammates important. But for any project to be successful, you need your team to understand what you want them to do and what your goals are as well as how you plan to achieve those goals. — Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
6. Multitasking to Increase Productivity
Many marketing professionals believe they’re not doing enough to increase their productivity. This is common among individuals who feel they have to do always more, but they don’t have time to invest. They may try to do everything at once and end up feeling exhausted, frustrated and unproductive. This common bad habit is multitasking, which can be disorienting and detrimental to your productivity levels. — Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
7. Trying Every New Tool
Marketers tend to get caught up in the latest trends and try to use every new tool or platform that comes out. Although staying up to date is important, you should focus on what’s going to work best for your business. Investing time and resources into a tool is useless if it’s not going to produce results. So, my advice would be to focus on a few tools that work, and don’t chase new ones. — Blair Williams, MemberPress
8. Skipping the Brainstorming Process
Many marketing teams make the mistake of skipping the divergent thinking process entirely, and instead jump right ahead to convergent thinking. What’s the difference between the two? Divergent thinking is the process of coming up with ideas, free of limitations or restrictions. Convergent thinking is the process of evaluating those ideas to find the best solution. — Maksym Babych, SpdLoad
9. Focusing Too Much on Vanity Metrics
Some marketers overemphasize vanity metrics. Impressions, clicks, cost-per-click and so on are nice, but what ultimately matters is sales and return on investment. The best marketers focus heavily on driving profitable growth strategies or creating cost-saving measures. — Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
10. Living in the Past
What used to work doesn’t anymore. Failing to stay on top of trends can be a costly mistake for you and your company. Seek out companies on the cutting edge that are getting real results in real time and are keeping up with the new, effective trends. — Mary Harcourt, CosmoGlo
11. Failing to Team Up With Other Departments
Not actually working with other departments within the company is a problem because you create more work for yourself. Instead, force yourself to take an interest in and become involved with other departments. Your job will get easier. — Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
