Don't be silly with your marketing plan

In the past couple months I have heard a lot of dumb marketing plans. Some of these guys who created these plans are new to the online industry while others have been in it for years. Cameron also wrote "What's your marketing plan" a few days ago, so I decided to compile a list of the 10 dumbest plans I have ever heard.

  1. We are going to undercut the competition by being cheaper then them and take all of their customers away from them. This might sound like a smart idea, but it is not easy. Pricing is usually not enough for a loyal customer to switch companies. The other problem with low pricing is you run into the "you get what you pay for" problem.
  2. TechCrunch is a popular website and getting your site/application on there is not enough. What are you going to do after the buzz dies down?
  3. Hiring a marketing company that has some inside people at Google is usually also a dumb marketing plan. Some people rely on this and don't realize that the marketing company usually does not know anyone on the inside of Google or the people they know can't tell them anything of value.
  4. Being bought out is probably the worst marketing plan I have seen to date. You can't just launch a company and expect it to be bought out. What do you do if you don't get bought out?
  5. Launching a product and then raising venture capital to compete with the competition is a good idea, but is also a bad marketing plan. Most people do not have any idea how hard it is to raise a couple of million dollars, especially when you don't even have a notch on your belt.
  6. Getting a Google account representative is not a good marketing plan. One of our customers felt this was the perfect marketing plan and their AdWords representative told them to put AdSense on their ecommerce site. I wonder how much business they have drove over to their competition.
  7. Creating a more usable product, service or website is a great way to help differentiate yourself from the competition, but it is not a marketing plan. What are you going to do when your competition makes their product more usable?
  8. Releasing a free product is not a marketing plan. What are you going to do when your costs are rapidly increasing and your revenue is at $0. It might create the buzz you are looking for, but it can also create a sinking business.
  9. Getting to the homepage of digg will create some buzz, but just like getting on TechCrunch the buzz eventually dies. At least with TechCrunch you are more likely to have a higher conversion rate of signups then digg.
  10. Making sure your product is full of buzz words such as Web 2.0, Ajax etc. is not a marketing plan. I do not think I need to elaborate on this one.

You may be able to use some of these ideas in your marketing plan, but one single concept should not make up your marketing plan. So if you are looking to start a company and want to get out there and succeed I would do these things.

  1. Learn about making a real marketing plan.
  2. Read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki.
  3. Do some market research. You may be pressed for time and want to release your product, but do some research first. Find out what people are looking for, their pains and how you can solve them. Also make sure you know what other players are in your market and what they do.
  4. The best thing you can do is learn from other people's mistakes. Check out your local book store or a books on tapes store and learn about other people's mistakes. There is a good chance you will still make some mistakes, but by reading about other people's successes and failures, it might help you make less of your own mistakes.

What do you think is important in a marketing plan?

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Reader Comments (3)

htmlor, September 4, 2006

good article!

"Making sure your product is full of buzz words such as Web 2.0, Ajax etc. is not a marketing plan."

I totally agree this.

Rajan Sodhi, September 6, 2006

I like your points - quite humorous! A marketing plan needs to center around the principals of understanding who your audience is, positioning your offerings uniquely, defining your value proposition, and identifying the best mediums to deliver your message.

frntk, September 6, 2006

I agree with your funny and instructive article.

My 1.09 cents on your first dumb idea: If you try to use prices to take clients from competitors the most probably outcome is a reduced price from your competitor... then you both lose and everyone will start to throw stones at each other and nobody wins. This (and other) ideas are covered in this book I just read.