Mike Stopforth

One of my professional speaking colleagues, Erik Vermeulen, forwarded a very cool email newsletter to me the other day. Normally that would tick me off but the newsletter, produced by Scott Ginsberg (check out his site and blog, they’re awesome), had an article titled 46 Marketing Mistakes Your Company Is (Probably) Making that caught my eye. I read it an thought I’d share it with you - some of it ought to be familiar already but there are a bunch of cool thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed…

1. You’re not That Guy.
2. You’re not remarkable.
3. You’re not blogging yet.
4. You’re not marketing daily.
5. You’re not focused at ALL.
6. You’re not using Google Alerts.
7. You’re not word of mouth worthy.
8. You’re not building a permission asset.
9. You’re not reading Seth Godin’s books.
10. You’re not giving enough away for free.
11. You’re not building a timeline of credibility.
12. You’re not the origin; you’re just the echo of someone else’s idea.
13. You’re not leveraging your media appearances in every possible way.

14. You ARE getting talked about, but you don’t know who’s doing the talking.
15. You ARE remarkable, but you’re not relevant. Or worthwhile. Or marketable.
16. You ARE blogging, but you’re not disciplining yourself blog every single day.
17. You ARE blogging every day, but your posts are too long, too safe, uninteresting, unfocused and written with poor architecture and ZERO Call to Action.

18. You’re saying WAY too much.
19. You’re creating noise, not music.
20. You’re trying to force word of mouth.
21. You’re the observer, not the observed.
22. You’re trying to hard to convince people.
23. You’re trying to be the arrow instead of the target.
24. You’re worried about marketshare, not mindshare.
25. You’re interrupting people, not interacting with them.
26. You’re relying on your customers to connect the dots.
27. You’re marketing efforts cause customers to hear FROM you, not ABOUT you.
28. You’re trying too hard to be authentic, which results in you NOT being authentic.
29. You’re sitting around waiting for your annoying, low-rent YouTube video to “go viral.”
30. You’re using WAY too much text on EVERYTHING. (Come on. Nobody’s gonna read all that crap.)

31. You’re (still) calling it “marketing.”
32. You’re (still) calling them “customers.”
33. You’re (still) wasting your money on advertising.
34. You’re (still) using Papyrus as your company’s primary font.

35. You think people care.
36. You think people have time.
37. You think customers aren’t smart.
38. You think putting up a MySpace page is (actually) going to help grow your business.

39. You don’t know who you are.
40. You don’t have enough samples out there.

41. You take too long to return calls and emails.
42. You stop marketing when you become successful.
43. You have a strong web-SITE, but a weak web-PRESENCE.

44. Your marketing looks like marketing.
45. Your goal is to make money, not create positive change.
46. Your company name includes words like “Associates,” “Communications,” “Creative,” “Kwik,” “Premiere,” “Solutions,” “Deluxe” and “Ultimate.”

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
If you stopped advertising, would ANYBODY even notice?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For a copy of the list called, “37 Words that Should NOT be in Your Company Name,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

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