Article written by Jesús Lopez from the “blog del Marketing” (es):
” Marketing programs are usually realised by experts employed on behalf of the companies, however, they also make some fatal mistakes as far as marketing is concerned:
1. Not having defined exactly who is the target. You can not miss a thing when talking about a promotional campaign. It’s essential to define exactly who is the target and what could be the impact of the promotion. On the contrary, you would see yourself overwhelmed.
2. On the same way, another of the fatal error would be not to realise a complete market study.
3. Brand extension. Many companies tend to extend their brand using it for any kind of product without homogeneity which can cause a drop in sales of all the products of the brand.
So be careful not to incorporate an inadequate product to an “umbrella brand” (overarching brand used across multiple related products)
For example: Honda is a cars, lawnmowers as well as generators manufacturer. If Honda would start selling wrinkle Correcting day cream, most probably the sales of all Honda products would go down!
4. Forgetting about re-invention. Every product as a “Life cycle”: Introduction/Growth/maturity/saturation. It’s essential to re-invent a substitute product or re-design it, add some technology… In brief, don’t rest on your Laurels an don’t let your product die when the rest of the world is evolving and competition is gaining in market share.
5. Abandon your clients. We are too inclined to focus our attention on potential client and forget about the existing clients. It’s important to pamper your clients because they already have confdence and half of the job is already done!
6. Inadequate designs. If you have a low level of sales on a product, you shoul check if it comes from the designs of the packaging. The attractive of a packaging can make the difference for a product’s sales. This can be defined through market researches of inquiries.
7. Error of the Supply chain. It’s essential to be a the right place at the right time: where the product will have success. Choosing what will be your supply chain depends on the position you want to take for your brand: For example, Chanel, which is a luxury cosmetic brand won’t sell its perfumes in a supermarket next to the SpongeBob’s fragrance because it doesn’t fit with your target clients.
8. Language/Cultural errors. This is the last but not least marketing error. It happens very often and mostly to very big Multinational companies when translating their Motto or expanding to a new foreign market. We have the example of an American multinational who decide to set up on the brasilian market and when they translated literally their motto into Portuguese, it offended the local native population.
In general, if you decide to set up on a foreign market, it’s essential to prepare before a exhaustive market research on the cultural differences and customs.
When Nestlé decide to sell some of its yogurt per 4 units in China, they where surprised to see that they didn’t sell even one! If the marketing team of Nestlé would have look into the chinese cultural part, they would have found that the number 4 means “DEATH” and is sign of very bad luck! whereas number 6 and 8 bring a lot of luck!