5 Common Marketing Tactics That May Hurt Your Business

When sales are flat or falling, many small businesses resort to common marketing tactics as a quick fix for the problem. Many of these tactics work in the short-term, which is why they have become the norm. But some marketing tactics can do long-term (and possibly irreversible) damage to your business. Let’s examine the drawbacks of five common marketing tactics so you can decide whether they will help or hurt your business in the long run.

How can common marketing tactics hurt your business?

Five common marketing tactics are lowering the price, offering a promotion, and appealing to fear, aspiration, or novelty. These tactics manipulate the customer into buying from you. Carrots and sticks such as these can be the best way to elicit the desired behavior for a single transaction, but they may do more harm than good if you want customers who have a loyal and long-lasting relationship with your business.

Price

Many small business owners are reluctant to play the price game, but cave in because it works. Most small business owners have lowered a price to close a deal. If you drop your prices low enough, people will buy from you.

How this tactic can hurt your business: Slashing prices or having a sale may be a quick fix for your sales problem, but once your customers get used to paying a lower price, they will never want to pay full price again.

Promotion

Whether it is “two for one” or “free toy inside,” promotions are so common that we often forget we are being manipulated. Like price, promotions work because an extra goodie is sometimes all it takes to close a deal.

How this tactic can hurt your business: Over time, giving things away for free can erode profit margins and attract customers that are doing business with you for the wrong reasons — in this case, because they were bribed.

Fear

Appeals to fear are frequently used in business and politics today. Humans have a deeply rooted drive to survive, so when someone tells us we might be in danger, we are inclined to listen just in case they are right.

How this tactic can hurt your business: Using fear to agitate insecurities by implying that bad things will happen to people who do not buy your product will not breed loyalty, just transactions. When you really need to rely on the loyalty of your past and current customers to keep your business alive, they will not be there for you.

Aspiration

Whereas fear motivates us to avoid something horrible, aspirations tempt us toward something desirable. Headlines like “Lose 15 pounds in 10 days” tantalize us with the idea of a more attractive body to which many of us aspire.

How this tactic can hurt your business: The idea of losing 15 pounds in ten days may get someone to sign up for a gym membership, but it will not keep them at the gym. Similarly, aspirations like these may work in the short-term to get new business but it will not create lasting and loyal relationships.

Novelty aka “Innovation”

Sometimes businesses add new features to a product to make it seem new or different, thinking they are being innovative. There is a big difference between innovation and novelty. “Newness” may drive short-term sales, but the newness will wear off and your customers will go find the next new, shiny object.

How this tactic can hurt your business:  Overreliance on novelty as a marketing tactic will not create loyal customers. Businesses end up adding more and more features while driving down price to get the sale, resulting in one-time transactions and no loyalty.

What marketing tactics can you use instead?

If you want loyal, long-lasting relationships with your customers, there is another way. To find out how you can better market your business and build loyal relationships, stay tuned!

Are you relying on these methods to get customers, but not sure what your other options are? We’d be happy to give you some ideas when you schedule a 30-minute marketing consultation with us.