Common Marketing Errors

Marketing a small business can be complicated. There are many facets to think about and many factors that go into the choices a business makes. There are endless approaches to starting a marketing campaign, but sometimes it’s best to start with avoiding common pitfalls in order to start off on your best footing. So without further ado, here are some of the most common marketing mistakes.

Not Having a Website

Oftentimes a small business thinks that because they are local, they don’t need a website. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as websites help to improve a businesses SEO, and if you are not high up on the results when someone Googles you, someone else will be and they are more likely to attract that customer.

Fortunately, this is a straightforward and inexpensive error to rectify.

Being Out-of-Touch with the Competition

This is a big one, one that you can benefit from greatly if you choose to. There are tons of people out there, each marketing their businesses in their own way. A good tactic to see how you measure up against your competition is by selecting businesses that are successful in their marketing and then analyze what they are doing that makes their campaigns so attractive. You can then choose which effective factors to use in your own marketing.

Not Tracking Marketing Efforts

It’s easy to have a “set it and forget it” attitude when it comes to marketing. Once the exciting part of starting a campaign is over, it’s easy to just assume that the marketing effort is doing its job and not really follow up with it. This is a fatal error, as it leads to continued marketing that just isn’t effective, or worse yet, it would lead someone to discontinue an advertisement that was effectively drawing in customers and building name recognition.

Targeting the Wrong Audience

It is sometimes the case that a business has an unrealistic expectation of what their bread-and-butter customers will be like, or what demographic they fit into. Take stock of your clients; what demographic do the bulk of them fit into? If your marketing is not intentionally directed to this group, you might find that your advertising is having a hard time reaching the clients that you want most.

Not Writing out a Marketing plan
- Research shows that businesses with a written out marketing plan are much more likely (twice as likely!) to have effective marketing than those businesses that just jump headlong in without a plan. Here you can even find a downloadable kit to help kick start your advertising campaign the right way.
Using Social media or FB in lieu of a website
- This one ties back in to our first marketing error: no website. Many people believe that a strong social media presence (think Facebook) can take the place of having a reliable, easy-to-navigate website. This just isn’t the case. In addition to the SEO benefits of having a website, your website serves as a statement about your brand and your business. Having a comprehensive website builds trust in your brand, something that is vital to building brand loyalty.
Ignoring Marketing all together
- Many businesses believe that having a good business with solid customer service and high customer satisfaction is enough to set them apart from their competition and build their reputation. While these things are of course very desirable in a business, it simply isn’t enough to set up shop and hope for the best. Marketing will get the word out about your business and will help attract customers that would otherwise not know about your business, or possibly go with another provider due to a lack of information or name recognition of your own business.

These seven common mistakes are ones you can successfully avert with a little planning and forethought.