Identifying marketing weaknesses

In order to target the right audience and build relationships with them, it is important to evaluate some of your past marketing strategies. Look for some of the marketing weaknesses and strengths you have developed over the years. Here are some areas of marketing weaknesses that most companies need to deal with:

Customer Service - Of course of the most important areas of your marketing strategy is your customer service department. How well do they handle the needs of your customers? Are they able to pay attention to the small and large problems? Do they engage in activities that help to strengthen your relationship with your customers? Having a solid customer service department is hard to come by for any business and it can make it quite difficult to build a solid reputation in the industry because people will gain a negative opinion about your company almost instantly. Sometimes you may hire the best customer service agents out there, but they are unable to do their jobs effectively because of mechanical problems and other issues that are related to the company.

Having a computer break down and making a customer wait 30 minutes for an invoice is considered bad customer service skills. Always have a back-up plan in place when small things happen and look for ways to keep your customers satisfied even when they are in unpleasant situations.

Data Management - One area that is often overlooked with marketing is data management. It is essential to the success of your business to spend some time properly organizing your data. If you don't maintain control over your data management, things will start to unravel. This may the reason why you have so many duplicate names in your database or why your past due accounts are continuing to increase. Small errors in data input can cause large problems for any company. Create a smart program and instructions so everyone knows how to use it and that they are able to do it without help from other employees.

Market Research - Several companies do not spend near enough time on market research. If you only conduct market research once, how do you know if you are meeting the needs of your existing customers and how do you know if you are even targeting the right market? You don't need to pay thousands of dollars to conduct market research, you can do it on your own by paying attention to media topics and some of the things your customers are involved in. Pay attention to blogs and social networking sites to learn more about your customers and the things they are involved in. Getting on these sites will also allow you to conduct surveys to get honest opinions about your products and your services.

Networking - It is important to work on networking your business if you want it to become successful. Networking not only helps you find new target audiences, it also will improve your ability to build relationships with other companies. These relationships can pay off when you need to promote your company at expensive events and you need to partner with another firm.

The other benefit of good networking is that it can also help you find solid employees that can take your company to the next level. Networking also provides you with the opportunity to increase your company's visibility. The more you can get out there and promote your business, the greater your customer responses will be.

These are just a few of the marketing weaknesses you can learn from. Some of the others include things like not having consistency with your marketing campaigns and the sales process.