10 Most Common Marketing Mistakes
Here is a list of the most common pitfalls in small business marketing. Hopefully, they will help you re-assess before it’s too late.
- You don’t have an effective website.
This is the truth; you’ll also be surprised to hear that a good proportion of small businesses don’t even have a website.
Some business owners think they don’t need a proper website because they mostly deal locally. They may be surprised to learn that consumers initially look online for products and services, and a very high percentage of those searches are local. People to need find your business on the internet before they come through your door or order online. Hence the need for a terrific website.
2. You don’t track results.
This is one of the worst offences.
If you don’t track, you really don’t know what works. You should be tracking your website goals with Google Analytics, as well as conversions through your pay per click ads, including tracking calls and foot traffic if you have a big sale or promotion, if you aren’t tracking; you’re throwing your money away.
Remember, it’s okay to make mistakes, so long as you learn from them. If you’re not tracking, there’s no way to learn if you are making mistakes. If you don’t track, then there’s really no way to improve.
3. You are unaware of what your competitors are doing with their marketing.
Keeping an eye on your rivals gives you a great opportunity to find out what works and what doesn’t… don’t ignore them. Keep tabs on what the competition is doing, even if they aren’t in your area. Find at least three similar businesses that are doing well, and then go through their strategies with a fine tooth comb.
With careful observance you’ll be able to recognise which of their plans of action work. Pay special attention to a course of action they do once, and never again. Notice what tactics they keep doing month after month after month. You just have to pay attention.
4. You’re a “Run of the mill” business.
Sometimes you can just open up another business that’s just like any other, and do alright. Look how many nail salons there are, or small independent cafes. In some businesses, you don’t have to be particularly remarkable to get by, in others, this approach can be suicide.
In most markets and enterprise models, you need to be distinctive. You have to demonstrate a highly justifiable reason why people should do business with you instead of your competitors. In most business sectors these days, you either stand out, or you go under. Positioning makes all the difference.
5. You are trying to reach the wrong audience.
This can defeat what could be great marketing and a potentially good venture. Some businesses have such a blinkered view of who they want their customers or clients to be, that they can’t see the customers they actually have.
This could easily be around a feature of a product. The seller thinks people are buying their product for reason A, yet people are really buying it because of reason B. If the company’s marketing is built around reason A, this misreading of their audience, could be costing them an uncounted amount of sales.
6. You hire people to do marketing for you without studying it yourself.
This happens regularly, you know you need to do marketing, but have no time to do it. So you hire someone to do it for you. This sometimes works, except, you haven’t studied marketing, or the type of marketing you’ve just hired for.
You need marketing literacy, that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert. The the best way to avoid both the major and most common marketing mistakes is to have a read up and get to know enough about the basics yourself.
7. You have no written out marketing plan.
We all know the best to ensure your business succeeds is to write a business plan? Well, it works much the same way for marketing.
Time and budgets are short, so try not to eliminate those perceived “unnecessary” marketing steps. Planning your strategy, specifying tactics you’ll use, how much they’ll cost and how much time they’ll take will dramatically increase your chances of success.
You could conceive and write out an effective marketing plan in an afternoon. In that time, those few hours could double the effectiveness of your budget.
8. You put more work into social media than your website.
When social media first exploded, there was a lot of chatter about driving traffic to these sites. Well, conversely, all your social media efforts should ultimately drive people back to your website. Social media is great to attract new prospects and as a channel to engage with existing prospects, but it’s no replacement for your own website.
9. You blew your budget on just one thing.
It’s a big mistake to spend your budget on something you’ve never tried before. This happens regularly, especially when new owners have their launch budget. They’ve got this great wad of money, and think if they invest it in this one big thing it will help to get them to break even faster.
Except it doesn’t, they see almost no results. Add this to, maybe, the most fatal small business mistake, being underfunded, and things could really look bleak.
10. You don’t do any marketing.
A common misconception: “We have a world-class product or service, so, the world will beat apathy to our door.” Well the news is… the world won’t. Even the most globally awesome businesses that are often thought of as not doing any marketing actually do marketing. They operate in a way we don’t recognize it as marketing.
Another one: “If we don’t spend any money on marketing, we can put all that money back into improving the business.” Without marketing, there’s no petrol in the tank, so the engine of your business stalls.
When all is said and done, you don’t have to take someone on full time to do your marketing. You don’t have to study for a degree. You don’t have to blow thousands of pounds on a budget. Just start small, track smart, and expand what works.
