In Russian there is an expression: “A smart man learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. The stupid man--he never learns.” This is both true in life and in marketing, where the lessons learned from wrong-doings could sometimes be more powerful than success itself. With that in mind, we’ve reached out to the industry to help put together a list of the most common mistakes marketers make. Are you guilty of any of these?

1. The Eight Most Common Mistakes
Marketers Make
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
– Bram Stoker, Dracula
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1. Spray And Pray
“Many marketers don’t segment
their databases and, instead, send
their content/message to everyone
they can. This ‘spray and pray’
technique only serves to devalue
your message. Content
segmentation is a crucial step to
making sure that the right message
reaches the right people.”
– Som Puangladda, senior director of
marketing for the buyer cloud, Rubicon
Project

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2. When You Assume …
“One of the most common mistakes
that marketers make is to assume
that a creative idea that they like
will resonate the same way with the
target audience. Unless you are
lucky enough to sell to marketers,
your clients have fundamentally
different needs and aspirations than
you do. For example, a pretty
straightforward text email can be
more powerful than a killer HTML-
rich email. Next time you review
creative, don’t think about what
you’d like to receive.”
– Ben Plomion, SVP of marketing,
GumGum

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3. The Feature Focus
“Focusing on features over futures is
the most common mistake I see
marketers make. Marketers should be
focusing on finding partners that have
a defined vision that aligns to their
own, and the drive to innovate by
solving challenges that will move the
needle into the future. Yet many can’t
help but get caught up in feature
comparisons. If you’re simply looking
for the same features that you already
have access to, it’s going to take a lot
longer to get from point A to point B,
if you ever get there at all.”
-- Jason Grunberg, director of content
marketing, Sailthru

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4. It’s Not All About You
“The biggest mistake in marketing is
when brands make their marketing all
about them. It says, ‘Check us out!’ Or
‘Our product is great because …’ And
the simple fact is that consumers do
not care about your brand or your
product. They want content that helps
them, educates them, or even
entertains them. … Great marketing
tells a story that makes your customer
the hero, not the product. Marketers
need to stop talking about what their
business does and start talking about
what their business does for their
customers.”
-- Michael Brenner, head of strategy,
Newscred

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5. Founder’s Day
“The biggest mistake I see marketers
making is to not think like an agile start-
up ‘founder.’ When I was at Coca-Cola, I
started the first global strategic innovation
group with a mandate to change the
marketing arsenal and approach for all
brands and channels in 200 countries. I
thought of myself as a start-up founder,
with my team being my co-founders, as
we identified and developed our strategic
opportunities inside a vast bottler
franchised network, who were our ‘angel
funders’ to raise capital for innovation
initiatives.”
– Steven Cook, founder, FortuneCMO.co

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6. Believing In ‘Mobile-Only’
“‘Mobile only’ has a nice ring to it, but
the reality is that few spend time on
only one device. Over the course of a
day, the typical user bounces from
smartphone to computer to tablet, not
necessarily in that order, but with that
mix of technology. Then you throw in
wearables. Unless you absolutely
know that your customer or prospect
lives only on one, it is imperative for
marketers to follow the customer
journey through CRM, marketing
automation, or a mixture that best fits
your business.”
– Jeff Hasen, founder, Gotta Mobilize

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7. Death By 1,000 Paper Cuts
“Embracing mediocrity, endorsing
death by 1,0000 paper cuts, garbage in,
garbage out. That’s what happens to
creative when it’s reviewed and
approved in a committee. Creative is
subjective and requires gut and
instinct. Feedback is important, but
one person must make the final call.
This person should embrace the
subjectivity, have great instinct, and
take risks.”
– Dave Marsey, EVP/managing director,
DigitasLBi San Francisco

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8. They Won’t Like Me
“I think there is a really interesting
perspective on embracing all of your
customer. In the world of full
transparency, marketers shy away
from open, social networks -for fear
of hearing negative feedback on
their brands or comments. Quite the
opposite--there is a wonderful, real-
time opportunity to listen, respond,
and have your advocates advocate
on your behalf!”
-- Marcy Q. Samet, CMO, MRM//McCann