The unprofessional head shot. You need a professional shot for all of your marketing needs – your website, social media profiles, business pages, and the list goes on and on. Yes, if you do not know this already, please note that your online profiles do serve as today’s resume and you want to put your best foot forward whether you are a business owner or are looking for a job. Do not use the selfie photo you took of yourself in your car if your company is selling 10K marketing seminars. And, if you look good in the above referenced selfie photo, use photo shop and get the damn seatbelt out of the picture, as well as the passenger seat. This is up there with those “classy” people who post their bathroom selfie for their online dating photo profile or even better yet is the lack of a photo (married, married, or serial killer). This is a bad move in business, as well as in your professional life. You can even go to the Picture People in the mall and spend 20$. Of course, by not hiring a professional photographer in this case, you will be dealing with screaming kids and vomit, but at least it is not a selfie car pic. Oh, you need one of these for your speaker’s sheet as well. We can help with design and content if you do not know what this is.
Sending “overly professional” snooze-worthy newsletters. Newsletter-style emails have become extinct in the terms of effective online marketing strategies when it comes to just sending out a salesy email. In general, your subscribers are going to get very sick of the flavor of the week – whether it be 50% off your marketing plan, buy one get one free XYZ or whatever other item they need to “buy right now”. I don’t know if it is a lingering childhood rebellion-type thing, but when someone tells me to do something right now, I tend to want to do the opposite when it comes to purchasing something. This is because if it is going to be 50% off, it most likely be 50% off the following week too. Tell personal stories in your newsletter, share interactive stories in an active voice and relate them back to your business. People use their email for communication … shocker.
Bad Taglines … that do not get translated appropriately. I have talked about bad taglines before, but this conversation takes it to a whole new level, because certain Fortune 500 executives didn’t really consider what their tagline translated to in another language. Here are a few funnies for you (that I really do not even need to comment on).
- The Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan finger-lickin’ good came out in KFC’s first Chinese campaign as eat your fingers off.
- When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say. “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you”. However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish wordembarazar meant embarrass. Instead the ads said: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
- Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
