The key to marketing is differentiation. This list will give you the roadmap on how to be different in your business business without breaking the bank (or…changing your hairdo, getting lots of tattoos or strange piercings)

There are so many things you can do to differentiate yourself from your competition: some of them work, many of them don’t. Some of them cost lots of money, some of them don’t. In a strange twist, it’s usually the ones that don’t cost a lot of money that usually work the best.

Jay Abraham, the world’s best business optimization strategist has lists as long as Shaquille O’Neal’s arm about how to be different and optimize your business on shoe string budget. In a prior blog post, you can listen to Jay Abraham share some of his wisdom with a group of our highest paying clients. The info on that call is worth its weight in gold (but you can hear it for nothing just by clicking the link).

Many of the changes that we made in our business that lead to huge gains had to do with this list of 20 mistakes (and their corollaries) that Jay says many business people make in differentiating themselves and marketing and growing their businesses. (Hint: see how few of them have to do with spending lots of money):

Top 20 Strategic Marketing Mistakes

Mistake #1 – Not testing all of your marketing ideas.

Corollary – Test all your marketing.

Mistake #2 – Running Institutional Advertising

Corollary – Run Only Direct Response Advertising

Mistake #3 –Not articulating and differentiating your Business.

Corollary – Develop a powerful USP and use it in all your marketing.

Mistake #4 – Not having back-end product or service.

Corollary – Create a profitable and systematic back end.

Mistake #5 – Not understanding your client and their needs and desires.

Corollary – Always determine and address the real needs of your clients and prospects.

Mistake #6 – You must ‘educate’ your way out of business problems…you can’t just cut the price.

Corollary – Always recognize that you must educate your client as a part of the marketing and sales process.

Mistake #7 – Not making doing business with your company easy, appealing and fun.

Corollary – Make doing business with your business easy, appealing and fun.

Mistake #8 – Not telling your clients the “Reason Why.”

Corollary – Always tell your client the “reason why.”

Mistake #9 – Terminating marketing campaigns that are still working.

Corollary – Don’t stop marketing campaigns that are still working just because you are tired of them.

Mistake #10 – Not specifically targeting your marketing.

Corollary – When you prepare your marketing, focus on the intended prospect and no one else.

Mistake #11 – Not capturing prospect & addresses, email addresses as well as pertinent contact information.

Corollary – Capture everything on a prospect or client that you can in an organized, retrievable system.

Mistake #12 – Not having a strategic plan.

Corollary – Always having a strategy which tactical actions and methods are integrated into.

Mistake #13 – Not having a marketing or sales system.

Corollary – Have a marketing and sales system in place and refine it continuously. Using letter/call/letter call or email/letter/call strategies.

Mistake #14 – Not taking advantage and integrating the Internet into every aspect of you marketing and sales efforts.

Corollary – Integrating the Internet into all your Marketing and sales activities.

Mistake #15 – In sales situations, shooting from the hip.

Corollary – Constantly using and refining a sales script.

Mistake #16 – Being stuck doing “what works.”

Corollary – Always be willing to change.

Mistake #17 – Not reinvesting your profits.

Corollary – Always parlay your success and momentum into greater achievement.

Mistake #18 – Not knowing and leveraging the lifetime value of a client.

Corollary – Always understand the lifetime value of your clients.

Mistake #19 – Not maximizing your assets, relationships, opportunities, resources, etc.

Corollary – Always explore and maximize your resources, assets and opportunities.

Mistake #20 – Treating marketing and sales as operational “silos.”

Corollary – Do your best to integrate marketing components into all your operational and backend processes.

This post was originally published by Market Maker Leads.