Marketing is the part and parcel of a business whether it is small or big. To grow up your small business and flourishing your sell, there is no alternative way without marketing. It’s a very common phenomenon for the small business owner to try new marketing tactics without no idea about the results of the experiment. It is a real disaster on the marketing budget of a small business. In order to avoid marketing mistake, you have to know the marketing pitfalls. You should study the failure of your competitor. You have to learn how and where you should spend to avoid mistakes.
Today I will show you eight common marketing mistakes and solutions. Just keep reading.
#1 Treat marketing as an investment, not an expense
Expense means buying and depreciating something. On the other hand, investment is purchasing something that will add value in the future. The core purpose of marketing is driving more leads to the customers and keep them engaging. So, you should treat spending money as the investment. Even in the bad time of your business, you shouldn’t stop marketing. Many of the small business owners make the mistake as they treat it as an expense. The investment in marketing allows you to research on the audience and you will get the valuable data of your audience. By the proper use of the data, you can grow your business as well as your sales.
#2 Have not a written marketing plan and marketing Budget
There is an old proverb that is still true today “Failing to plan means you are planning to fail”. Without having a rock-solid plan and an adequate budget, it is really tough to be successful. The rate of failure is high for this kind of small business guy. A report from the Content Marketing Institute in 2016, the effectiveness of B2B marketers increased significantly when they had a documented content marketing strategy. On the contrary, 40% of them considered their reason for failure as having no documented or written marketing strategy.
So, the suggestion is creating a documented marketing strategy as soon as possible. Be an action taker. You shouldn’t hurry to create a marketing plan, take your time, and observe your competitor’s marketing technique. You should try to add some fresh flavor to your marketing plan compare to your competitors.
Now the point is how can I create an effective plan? Concentrate on the financial costs. You should create segmentation in your plan according to the priority. For a small business, you should reinvest 9%-12% of your revenue for marketing purpose. If you are in the early phase of your startups you need to spend more due to build your brand. You know branding and loyalty is the most important factor for a business. So, you should be aware of building your brand in the very first stage of your business.
Your plan should contain a different budget for different things like design your website and maintenance, inbound and outbound marketing, logo and brand identity and Facebook ads. If you are a busy person you can hire a virtual assistant who can schedule your appointments calendar and follow up your business and report you on the daily basis. You should have enough funding to reinvest and buying tools for your small business.
#3 Wrong Audience Targeting
Targeting is very sensitive. No matter how good is your logo and brand identity, your site design, your message, your products, if you make mistake to target your audience. You never get the expected ROI from your investment regarding wrong targeting.
The solution to this kind of problem is researching your audience. You have to find out their buying behavior. Spend time to figure out why they should buy your products. The best is treating yourself as a customer. Obviously, it will help you to find out the solution.
You may collect your potential leads first. Then start the experiment on them. Email marketing is fruitful for testing your audience. You will get the valuable data of your audience like their age, sex, and interest. Or you may use Facebook ad manager for collecting information about your audience.
#4 Not differentiating your products and Services
Differentiating the products and services are the rare practice among the small business holder. You should present your products or service more uniquely than your opponents.
You must ensure a good communication between your business and your audience. Try to teach your audience about the products or services. If they can understand that your products or services are better and unique than others, you need not ever be worried about your business.
#5 Lack of case studies
There is no alternative to study on your competitors. You should have an eye on your competitor’s marketing strategy. closely observe their initiatives and find out the factors of success behind the screen. I can assure if you can figure out their tactics and reason for failure and success, your business will never flop.
For spying on your competitors, you can use some online tools Spyfu to understand the SEO or PPC strategy of your competitors. Learn from others failure helps to grow out your business and sales certainly.
#6 Lack of proper Evaluation of your existing customers
Never ignore your existing customer while you search for new one through marketing. Research shows that finding a new customer is 6 times costly than cross-selling or upselling an existing one.
According to Forrester Research, nearly 70% of new audience checks out customer reviews before purchasing a product or service. This is why you need to concentrate on your existing customers. Otherwise, the growth of your business will be at risk. So, keep some budget for your existing customer that will pay you a lot certainly.
#7 Not have an Active Presence in Online
Do you believe almost half of all small businesses in the U.S don’t have any website? It is true that every business need not website. But more than 90% people like to search about a product before buying it. They love to watch video especially. So, in this era of technology, you should have a responsive website about your service or products.
You should have the active presence in the social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest. Though you need to invest for this purpose, the return is absolutely good.
#8 Indifferent to your Marketing Metrics
Suppose, you invest monthly $600 for PPC and $600 for Social media. Do you research regularly on the ROI or conversion rate? Have you thought which one is best for your business? You should find out the best one for your business. By concentrating some points you any get the answer like-
PPC (pay per click)
CPL (cost per lead)
Average lifetime value of a customer and etc.
The success and failure are closely related. By evaluating these eight mistakes and having a great marketing strategy, you will get a lot of leads to your small business and it will definitely help you to grow.
