Jeanette McMurtry puts it so well:

Major mistakes in business marketing include:

Egocentric, Overreaching, Overbearing, Nebulous, Void of ownership, Out of site out of mind, Budget oriented, and Immeasurable.

About Egocentric marketing Jeanette says:

Out of either intimidation or inompetence, or both, marketers too often cater their marketing efforts to the business owner (sometimes themselves), CEO, board of directors, or other heads of their business environment.

And all too often the reigning business executives have little or no marketing in their resumes and no direct experience in serving the customer. Yet marketers still build strategies and creative campaigns based on what will make management happy or, in other words, what will best prolong their job security and result in a better job evaluation.

When these are the influences that drive marketing plans (and in my observation, they often are), marketing has little chance of generating desired returns and thus fails.

Advertisements or any communications activities generated by the preceding motives, typcially result in what I call ‘ego ads’ or ‘board of director ads’. They please a small audience for the short term (until the results come in) but fail to have an impact on the bottom line.

Copy for ego ads espouses the company misssion, making leaders feel proud and self-actualised, but fail miserably when it comes to appealing to consumers and their decision processes.

Brilliant!

A few so-called ‘marketing managers’ and company Directors that I have worked with spring to mind…