• You believe you can be effective just by pushing some buttons. You think all you have to do is place ads, send direct mail, make speeches, etc. But, these things don’t bring business in. They may increase awareness and even engender responses, but not sales. Marketing without selling is a major mistake.
• You are too obsessed with your excellence. When that happens, your marketing becomes focused on yourself, but prospects don’t care about you. Prospects only care about what you can do for them. You must create a connection between what you do well and what the prospect needs.
• You don’t find out the target’s real motivations. You only know what they tell you. You need to do research, which means talking with people other than the targets, or talking to the targets when they don’t know you are targeting them.
• You are the same as your competition. CPAs are pretty much all alike. Therefore, you have to identify or create differences between you and them, even if the differences are small. A small difference may be big in the eyes of the targets.
• Your marketing is based on logic. But most decisions are made on emotion. Prospects make emotional decisions, and they interpret the facts to rationalize their decisions. Your marketing focus should be on relationships. Your marketing messages should be like letters to friends, not sales proposals based on reason.
• You don’t stay involved. Even when prospects respond to your marketing initiatives, that doesn’t mean they are ready to buy. You must keep in touch with them regularly so you will be in the right place at the right time.

From Rain Today (www.raintoday.com), May 31, 2006. For the complete article, click on the following link: https://www.raintoday.com/pages/1318_the_7_marketing _mistakes_every_service_business_makes.cfm.