by Don Taylor

When I hear someone say that marketing is easy, I flinch. Marketing is not easy. It never has been and probably never will be.

It may actually be getting tougher to hit your target market because there are so many ways to miss a market. For example, some businesses fail to realize when a market has peaked. Other firms actually bring products to the marketplace with no target in mind. Still others pick out a target, but don't come close to hitting it.

Missing the mark in marketing is not just a small-business problem - it happens to large firms as well. We can study some marketing mistakes made by big companies by looking back just a few years.

A classic mistake

Twelve years ago, Coca-Cola changed the formula of the best-selling soft drink in the world. The company wanted a new product to compete for the younger "Pepsi generation," and made a move away from the baby boomers who had made its brand so popular.

The boomer generation was 21 to 39 years of age when Coca-Cola introduced New Coke. The company soon discovered that most boomers would rather fight than switch, so Coke quickly brought back the original boomer-generation product.

Coca-Cola Classic is still the drink of choice for a powerful market demographic. The lesson here is to remember who your best customers are and give them what they want.

A mini-mistake

Ten years ago, the fashion industry decided to do a re-run of the miniskirt. It soon found that the women who had embraced the fad 20 years earlier were now older, had jobs, families, fuller figures and more modesty.

These older female buyers were already disillusioned with high clothing prices and they said "no thanks" to the fashion industry's offer of less material for more money. The lesson here is just because it worked once, doesn't mean it will work again.

A leader gets lost

The best way to become a leader in marketing is to become a follower. A follower of your customer's needs and wants, that is. In 1990, Sears lost its No. 1 retail position to Wal-Mart. Actually, Sears fell to third place as Kmart also blew by the former retail powerhouse.

Sears, a retail leader for more than three decades, had lost its way. The big-box discounters offered more choices and lured customers away with everyday low prices.

Sears had settled into the comfortable rut of serving a middle-class consumer with middle-class products and pricing. As the middle-class family declined, interest rates climbed and real income diminished. The customer demanded value and Sears didn't respond. Just seven short years later, Wal-Mart was nearly three times the size of Sears.

The lesson here is to stay close to your customer. How big you are is not nearly as important as how quickly you respond to your customer's needs and wants.

Miscellaneous marketing mistakes

Of course there are other major marketing errors. For example, the classic "putting-all-of-our-kids-in-one-cabbage-patch" mistake. Coleco found out that variety is the best way to outlive a short-term fad in the toy business.

Burger King tried a Herb-the-Nerd promotion that bombed, because consumers were led to believe that only nerds went to Burger King. Ford Motor Co. didn't think the world needed a big, fat station wagon. Consequently, Lee Iacocca produced the market-share-grabbing mini-van when he headed Chrysler a few years later.

Marketing mistakes are expensive. Missing the mark is easy. As we roar into the next century, niche marketing will intensify. Stay close to your customers and remember your marketing history lessons.