5 Dumb things that businesses are doing today
If the business of America is business than we are in a hell of a lot of trouble. It seems sometimes that some of the best and brightest people are the ones being shown the door while the established empty suits understand that they can get away with not performing if they make some changes ore get their names in the trade press. The amount of money companies wasted on hiring big consulting companies staffed with MBA’s whose job it is to recommend changes based on their idea of a business is staggering sometimes. Then there are businesses who try and sell us stuff via the free white paper which is shallow at best. Here are 5 dumb things that businesses are doing today …
1ne: Renaming their market research department “customer/consumer insights”.
Come on, will you? Sure market research is supposed to reveal insights about your customers or prospects, but renaming your market research department without looking at how these insights are gathered, shared and implemented within the organization is an exercise in futility. Renaming a group without looking at processes and how information gets turned into actionable data and measured is just plain dumb.
2wo: Issuing “free Whitepapers” that are nothing but camouflaged sales brochures.
How many times have you gone through the trouble to enter your personal information to get, what you thought, was a great white paper on something only to find it contains a lot of basic information you already knew and is shallow at best? It happens a lot and then you have to deal with either annoying phone calls or SPAM trying to sell you something.
3hree: Charging money for market research reports.
First, they entice you with some data, then they tell you that you too can purchase a report for 3 or 4 figures. Sure, I would love to purchase a market research report that will be outdated in 30–60 days. Can’t think of a better way to spend my budget dollars. The truth is that there is a lot of great information that’s available for free if you just spend the time to look for it online. You also should be conducting ongoing research via social media so you can get insights on your brand, product and customers all the time.
4our: Marketing insights and analysis from people who writers, but never worked in marketing a day in their lives.
So our Facebook account people thing we can get a million fans if we spend more on Facebook ads. OK, let's do it without really understanding the value of a Facebook fan and whether it actually provides real business value.
5ive: People in marketing who get their name in the trade press for the wrong reasons.
So Marissa Mayer is going to save Yahoo! Yep, Yahoo needs a tech head and not a marketing or branding person because we all know that Yahoo’s branding strategy is…? Well, I’m sure they have a branding strategy somewhere. How many times do we see pictures of people who talk about what they have done on social media in soft metric terms without really explaining the business value ? Sure let’s end an executive from Coke to France for a convention so he can tell everyone that getting 5 million fans is a great social media success even though we’re not sure if they are current customers or even see our facebook posts. There never seems to be shortage of business magazines giving business people a chance to stroke their own egos even as their brands struggle.
Originally published at www.newmediaandmarketing.com on May 22, 2015.
