8 Ways to Screw Up Your Marketing You work hard to build a reputation and generate positive word-of-mouth. But are you undermining your own efforts? Consider these common blunders.

Marketing is a terrible thing to waste (with apologies to the iconic campaign slogan). You work hard to build a reputation and generate positive word-of-mouth. But are you undermining your own efforts? Consider these common blunders.

1. Your marketing is about you. It should focus on your products and services, right? Well, no. It should focus on what your products and services do for your customers. The former is corporate-centric; the latter is customer-centric. Take yourself out of your marketing, and put your customer at the heart of it. In other words, make your customer--not your company--the hero of your story.

2. You market to yourself. You can mess things up if you make assumptions about your customers based on the preferences and behaviors of you or your friends. Your marketing could well end up discordant with your intended audience--out of touch with their true wants, needs, likes and behaviors. On that point …