The Winning Strategy Is Knowing How to React
The most common errors in marketing involve strategic misalignments in product positioning and target segment selection, or errors in product sales policy, such as failures in new product launches or brand extensions.
Strategic and Operational Errors
Errors can mar pricing policies, with the setting of prices that are either too low or too high; or result from misalignments in communication and promotion policies, such as inappropriate advertising tone or content, unpersuasive social media communication or promotions that are difficult for the customer to understand. Distribution problems can also arise due to poor product availability in certain markets due to suboptimal retail channel choices.
For example, there have often been cases of brands that invested heavily in advertising, but then, due to errors in distribution channel management, the product was not easily available to buyers.
All of these errors often lead to serious losses. Suffice it to say that most new product launches end up with goods being withdrawn from the market due to product turnover and sales insufficient to cover costs.
The Problem of New Products
According to Nielsen, approximately 15% of products in large-scale retailing are abandoned each year because of low turnover, with overall sales of less than 1%. Most of these products stayed in stock for less than a year, failing to reach the minimum turnover needed to justify their continued presence on the shelves. This means that often, when a new product is launched on the market, a short circuit is generated that makes the product underperform.
Market Testing and Marketing Mix Limitations
Yet, before launching products, companies conduct market research and product testing precisely to gauge target customer preferences and reactions. However, these tests are often conducted shortly before launch, when it's too late to go back and it's no longer possible to change the product's essential features.
These tests are used to evaluate elements of the marketing mix, such as product packaging, pricing or messaging. At this point, however, it's too late to radically change the product concept, which has required a very long time to develop. Sometimes, shortcomings in the concept are compensated for by changes to other elements of the marketing mix, which alone fails to paper over gaps in the original idea (which leaves the customer unconvinced). In fact, trying to address the lack of consistency in the concept inevitably leads to further errors in pricing or communication, which becomes opaque, creating the conditions for consumer distrust and poor brand engagement.
Customer Care and Error Management
Very common errors in the commercial sphere also concern customer care. Companies are often unable to identify the sources of dissatisfaction of their customers, something which ultimately leads them to stop purchasing the brand or turn to competitors. However, there are companies that capitalize on their mistakes, seeking to identify them immediately and then taking swift action to restore the relationship. In this case, the relationship of trust with the customer can actually be strengthened by the fact that the company demonstrates the ability to listen and react. The worst thing, in fact, is to make mistakes, creating dissatisfaction, but then leave customers to fend for themselves, with call centers that are unreachable and requests for help falling on deaf ears, further aggravating frustration and dissatisfaction.
Truly customer-centric companies are not those that never make mistakes — and there are potentially many that can be made in marketing — but those that react immediately and effectively.
A very interesting case is that of Amazon, which, thanks to the level of its customer care, has managed to strengthen that 'one-click trust' so dear to its founder and not easy to develop in a business that does not have physical touchpoints. Whenever we have a problem with the online retailer, customer care takes charge of the issue and tries to resolve it as quickly as possible, always doinga follow up with the customer to determine whether the issue has been resolved.
