Marketing Mishaps: Don’t Fall Victim To A Promotional Nightmare

A well-established, effective Marketing plan is characteristic of any prominent business; and for good reason too. When you take into account that marketing is how a Business attracts customers, and equate customers to revenue, a good marketing plan is almost a lifeline to any given business—without it, the business would surely plunder. With that being said, you can probably see why a marketing plan must take off without a hitch. Any errors here can result in lost customers, lost revenue, and an overall embarrassment to the business in question.

This is why small business owners and large corporations alike devote a substantial amount of funding towards their marketing budgets. The idea is to hire the greatest in minds in marketing to unleash their creativity and knowledge in promotion and advertising. However, even the greatest minds sometimes find themselves in a conundrum; and what may seem like a minute mistake at first, can quickly become a promotional nightmare.

A Marketing Fiasco

Just last year, for instance, a marketing fiasco of epic proportion took place as 6,000 promotional canvas bags and logo pens were given to students by Missouri State University employees that featured the obviously misspelled word, “Univeristy.” Being an institute for higher learning, one would never expect Missouri State University officials to overlook such a simple mistake. Apparently, the initial spelling error occurred during the first initial stages of the design process. However, the error was unknowingly approved by the bookstore’s director, who later resigned, leaving no one else to have the chance to catch the error.

For Missouri State University, the promotional blunder was a $70,000 mistake. For a smaller institution or business, this type of mistake would be absolutely devastating. Let’s look at a hypothetical situation for a minute, involving a small frozen yogurt shop. Say this business has a marketing budget set aside totaling $2,000. Of this, the shop owners spend $1,600 on a surplus to t-shirts featuring the business name and logo. However, the web designer hired to design the logo ended up misspelling the store’s name, which found its way on the hundreds of shirts that have been ordered. It this situation, the store owners are really left helpless with hundreds of botched t-shirts and only a few hundred dollars left in their marketing budget (depending on how much they paid the web designer).

Marketing Mistakes

The point to take home here is that marketing mistakes, albeit simple, can have a highly detrimental impact any given business. One of the most common mistakes—spelling—is easily avoidable with just a few simple practices. First, since most of the designing occurs on a computer, use that nifty spell-check feature that just about every computer comes pre-equipped with. Microsoft Word is home to a rather powerful spell-check feature that should be utilized whenever. Furthermore, while a spell-checker may be one of the best proofreaders, don’t off it as the only set of eyes available (figuratively speaking, that is). If you find yourself in charge of logo design, before sending your designs off to be published, ask one or two of your colleagues to look over your design first.

Simply put, you don’t want to find yourself at the receiving end of a promotional nightmare. Even the tiniest mistakes can have a massive impact, especially in the eyes of the customers you service. Before following through with anything in terms of marketing, even if you have entrusted your campaign to a highly-accredited marketing manager, check, double check and then check again. Even the most brilliant of minds can make a mistake or two, so it is up to you to ensure this doesn’t happen. After all, it is your business.