3 Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid (and a Reminder)

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Are you pondering your annual marketing goals and brainstorming options for your editorial calendar? Here are three puddles you should try to stay out of – and a few resources where you might find some inspiration or fresh ideas.

Pitfall #1: Overlooking the ‘buyer’s journey’ problem.

61% of B2B marketers said their biggest challenge is creating content that appeals to different stages of the buyer’s journey, according to the latest Content Marketing Institute report. Therefore, if you crack that code, you’re outpacing the majority of your peers!

Increasingly, I do see clients looking at their project list through this lens. For a few ideas on tackling the buyers journey, try a quick scan of this, this and this piece from a market-research firm (a client) about how customers in financial services are taking shorter purchase journeys.

Pitfall #2: Keeping annual goals in your head (but not on paper).

People who wrote down goals achieved 40% more than people who just thought about goals, in a 2007 study from the Dominican University of California.

Now consider that 97% of companies use content marketing, but only 57% have a documented strategy, according to Semrush. This is an easy opportunity to get on the right side of behavioral science and again outpace your peers.

So how do you create goals and/or a documented strategy for an editorial calendar? For some ideas, try this resource, or here or here. You also might find inspiration in an old post I wrote about my mix-and-match approach to editorial calendars.

Pitfall #3: Ignoring the negativity-bias boost.

My first draft for this newsletter shared “3 tips for the year” – but here we are talking pitfalls instead. Why? Because people react more to negative than to positive. A recent study from the University of Michigan found that the negativity bias, where people display stronger interest in negative news, is observed across the world, not just in American culture.

Back when I worked at Neuberger Berman, when interest rates were newly 0% and there was a mad scramble for income investments, I authored a presentation called “The Dangers of Income.” Income? Dangerous? It was a hit. As work projects go, it was one of my greatest successes ever, earning me opportunities to travel and present at intermediary conferences for the first time and opening the door to an investment strategy job. It was an in-demand marketing story for more than a year.

Over the last eight years in business, I have often pitched clients on the negative angle of a topic – and they almost always opt for a more positive headline. “We don’t want to be too negative,” they say.

That’s reasonable, to be sure, but there’s a strong case for occasionally, sometimes, once in a while taking the negative angle – mistakes to avoid, pitfalls to sidestep, worst ways to handle a problem. The only real difference is the headline. The rest of the piece can reinforce all kinds of positivity. Try taking a little dance with danger and just see what happens…

A reminder

‘Tis the season of tax reporting. Just a quick reminder that the mailing address for Marsh Consulting LLC did change in 2022 – please take a moment to check that your payables teams have updated their records for tax statements:

Marsh Consulting LLC
5191 Linnean Ter NW
Washington DC 20008

Looking for help with financial content in 2023? Reach out and let’s talk about your project needs.