13 ways to kill great marketing: while you may understand marketing, there are others who don't. And these well-intentioned amateurs can create havoc with your best-laid plans.

• Author: Graham, John R.
• Position: Feature

Bad things happen to good marketing, to paraphrase the title of a popular book of several years ago. It makes a salient point, one that often flies over the heads of everyone from president to teller. It's this: unlike other bank functions--from accounting to human resources--every bank manager sees himself as a self-anointed marketing expert.

This doesn't deny the value of input. Carefully measured and analyzed, such information can provide valuable insights for refining and shaping a marketing program.

At the same time, too many "cooks" can--and do--spoil the marketing "soup." Or, more to the point, distort, alter, subvert and even kill what could be productive marketing programs. Unfortunately, it's not always evident what's happening until the damage is done.

Here are 13 common ways self-appointed marketing experts damage and even destroy beneficial marketing efforts.

1. Basing decisions on personal opinion. This is the number one killer. Listen carefully. If you hear such words as "I think," "I feel," "in my opinion," "I never listen to," "direct mail is too expensive," "we tried all of that" or "advertising never works," when a marketing program or project is discussed, you are talking to a killer.

   Marketing isn't for amateurs any more than is accounting. Personal opinion is no substitute for experience and research.

2. Lack of follow-through. Experience suggests that those who talk the most about marketing tend to know the least, do the least, or both. The more they talk, the less they do. They come to meetings ready to battle, but when you ask them for specific information, the best they can do is send you a pdf file. These are the people who espouse high expectations, but when it comes down to translating ideas into action, they come up empty.

3. Failing to do enough. The talk is bigger than the budget--or the commitment. The meetings are always about developing a comprehensive, proactive, consistent marketing program. Then when it gets close to implementation day, there is a scaling back and eliminating of components.

   Successful marketing demands a carefully crafted and expertly executed plan that meets its objectives because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When elements are cut out, pared back and otherwise altered, there is a diminishing of the overall impact and the program falls short.

   Every element of a marketing program will not be highly successful. Failures occur. If the program is sufficiently robust, the...