Three Marketing Horror Stories

Halloween is a time when we scare ourselves for fun. It seems an appropriate time for marketing horror stories.

One of our neighbors turns his front yard into an amazing  musical graveyard full of special effects. I think he spends the rest of the year planning and building things that will scare the jeebers out of the neighborhood kids. Well, everybody needs a hobby!

The government shutdown, the economic situation, and aviation regulations and tax implications are all frightening enough without any embellishment.  Many of the things that scare us are outside of our control. But here are four things that should scare you. And these are things that you can and should do something about!

Marketing Horror Story #1 – Dependency on One Large Client or Client Type

The scariest number in any business is the number one.

Pilots love redundant systems –  All pilots associated with  our companies eat two different lunches when we’re on the road. (Speaking of horror stories – John and I carelessly both ate hamburgers at a hangar cookout in Farmington New Mexico – we were looking for the nearest airport soon after takeoff.) We have two radios, two sets of instruments (the sixpack is the backup for the glass panel, looking out the window is the backup for the sixpack, etc.)   We like having at least two of everything. Options can save your life!

If the life of your company depends on just one of anything  (all of your business from one client, all of your talent from one employee, all of your data on one hard drive) you should be staying up nights in a cold sweat until you get that fixed.

The most obvious example that comes to mind is an aviation company that does the vast majority of its business with the U.S. Postal Service. Being astute business people, of course they’re expanding their product offerings and researching marketing opportunities to reach out to a diverse group of civilian organizations and corporations.

We’re picking on the government here, but if most of your revenue comes from just one client, or if most of your clients come from ANY one narrow sector of the economy, you should be scared.

Marketing Horror Story #2 – Being the Low Cost Option In Your Market

Wal-Mart positions itself as the low-cost leader in the retail industry.  There are aviation companies that pride themselves on being the low-cost provider of a product or service.   We think this is a scary place to be.

Low cost equals low margins. Low margins equal risk.

You can’t afford to attract and keep the best people. You can’t afford to provide the best service. You can’t afford the sales and marketing process to have a reliable flow of new customers.  You can’t afford to upgrade to new technology that your competitors adopt.  That latest technology that your competitor invests in might just be something that revolutionizes the industry and allows them to provide their product or service at a lower cost than you can.

Their investment could put you out of business.

Customers who buy from you because of price are by nature more cost-sensitive, and easily leave you for a competitor because of price.

Better unique selling propositions (USP) to aspire to are those that inspire loyalty from your employees and customers.

Strive to be one or more of the following:

• The highest-performance provider (by some meaningful metric.)
• The over-the-top luxury service provider.
• The custom solution provider.
• The safest or most reliable product or service provider.

Customers who buy from you for any of the reasons above are more likely to stick with you even if you charge more, and even if your competition offers them a better deal on price.

Marketing Horror Story #3 Empty Spots In your Sales Pipeline.

Or (Gasp!) No Documented Sales Pipeline At All!

A functioning marketing system includes a pipeline of prospects in your sales process. It takes many aviation companies months to acquire a new customer. (This is the time that passes between the first contact with an ad or a trade show, through the time it takes the prospect to do the research, get consensus among the decision makers at his company, get the budget approved, and execute a contract.)

If you know the statistics of how many people from each stage in your marketing system proceed to the next stage, and how long it typically takes, you know how many new customers you will have six months or one year from now.

If you don’t know this, you should be very scared.

If you HAVE a reliable sales pipeline but see a dramatic drop at any point along the way, this is not quite so alarming because you have some time to make adjustments and corrections.

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If any of these three marketing horror stories rings a bell, find some time to talk with us as soon as possible.