Let’s analyze some very popular illusions of marketing activities.

The dependence of the revenue received on the amount of advertising costs.

Do not rely on the illusion: “The more I spend on advertising, the more I can earn.” This is a dangerous illusion that can lead to the bankruptcy of a business at any stage of its development. The amount of business earnings is not directly proportional to the amount of costs for it. Costs are important, but they are not directly related to the result. There is a large mass of mediating factors. Investments in marketing and business development should be conscious, expedient, come on time, occur at the stage when you clearly understand “What will you promote today?”, “What are your advantages?”, “What capabilities do you have?”, “Is this your considered and mature decision?”.

The illusion of a direct cost-to-result relationship is a convenient excuse for inconvenient results in marketing and is very popular among almost all marketers.

The marketer is trying to study the market.

Answering such a question is easier to say directly that he does it for himself, to create the illusion of activity, because of ignorance of your product and unwillingness to know it. Tell me, is it so important for you to find out what is happening on the market right now and did you really order a market research about a market because you can’t read the same news feeds yourself, can not collect some statistics, can not see the TOP 50 sites?

Why do marketers study the market and your competitors already at the first steps? Often they just want to show you quick results. This maneuver is called “copy and so pushed the company on the same level with the best market participants.” The question remains: “How did such a marketer determine who the industry leader is and whose marketing is the best?”. Most often, these are tools for rapid technical analysis of the content of third-party sites. So nothing of high quality can be achieved.

The study of the market and competitors is not an important event for the first effective steps in the activities of a marketer. A marketer needs to first study and know your product, its features, advantages, take an interest in a set of exclusive offers and your team’s approach to the consumer and his interests, improve the product offer together with you and based on your capabilities. A real marketer is one who promotes only your company and your product.

Why should you pay a marketer for an artificial market research activity? The market is vast, the market situation will change faster than a marketer will study it. A marketer needs to be paid to study your activities: product, name, benefits. You should contact a marketer who knows the segment of your product well and is able to produce effective (effective) measures to promote it.

The marketer is dispersing your attention.

It often happens that you will hear from a marketer that he was engaged in the analysis of the seller’s activities, such aspects that can be called very specific and even closed commercial information about the seller’s activities. 

Take note right away, the marketer in his activity is not engaged in the analysis of suppliers and contractors, the analysis of trade and procurement activities and production indicators. The marketer is not engaged in ranking consumers according to their importance to the company and developing such criteria. The marketer should study the consumer, but not rank. If the marketer did all this, most likely, this specialist did not have any results in his activity as a marketer.

Inappropriate.

Marketers should not be interested in such parameters as the raw material supply plan, logistics for such deliveries, your payment calendar, etc. This is all planned based on the development of sales of the seller’s product, and not vice versa.

A marketer cannot aim to increase the well-being of the seller’s employees, as well as his own well-being. In no way should the costs of the work of the marketing department be equated or proportional to the growth of the company’s revenue and vice versa.

Untimely.

A marketer can predict changes in market conditions and offer to carry out the necessary measures, but an external marketer is unlikely to do this, working on working out the tasks you have set.

Conversion.

Pseudo-marketers are engaged in conversion, where the goals will be just these calls that you don’t need. They will consider their work done. Do you need it?

When you are not satisfied with the result: unnecessary calls and messages from interested persons, or their absence, you will be offered to increase the budget. How to increase it if you didn’t extract anything at the previous stage. Always think about it, these thoughts are not spontaneous. Think, regardless of what the marketer will tell you at the same time, still calling yourself a cool specialist and a successful person. Take all the best practices from the marketer: texts, tables, analytics and change the marketer. He experimented on you. He and you have enough of what you have achieved together. It is necessary to start over. The future fate of the marketer should not interest you. Cross him off your list of business contacts and don’t contact him again. Your business will never budge if it is loosened up and it will move in a dead-end direction.

What are the limitations for marketing and where is the real limit of its capabilities? Read about this in the following author’s article from AG.