When business owners begin to construct a marketing strategy, it’s not uncommon for them to focus on what they instinctively feel will work best. But unless a person running a business has solid marketing experience, those instincts can lead to ineffective practices that waste a lot of time and money.
Here are 6 of the biggest, most common mistakes business owners make in marketing:
1. Not Knowing Your Goals
Often we’ll hear business owners say “I need a new website” or “I need to be on all the social media channels.” But when we ask “why?” they don’t always have an answer. And often the answer is along the lines of “because everyone is doing it.” This mentality causes business owners to put the cart before the horse, and it is a mistake.
There’s something to be said for staying ahead of competitors and providing the kind of engagement that your audience expects, but not all of the most common marketing tactics will be effective at driving revenue.
The most effective way to use marketing as a tool is to first define your business goals and then find the marketing tactics that will best help you reach that goal.
2. Not Knowing Your Target Audience
Making assumptions about who is interested in your product or business is a costly mistake that is all too common.
It’s ok to make some educated guesses based on industry expertise, but most of what you know about your audience should be based on research and numbers. If your assumptions are wrong, then you’ll be spending time and money on marketing efforts that don’t return any results.
Being able to achieve your business goals through marketing means that you need to understand who your target audience is, where your target audience is, and what kind of content will make them want to engage with your business.
Use research and analytics to learn more about who your audience is and where on the web they’re likely to be engaged.
Through data analytics, you may learn that your audience is largely engaging with your business through mobile devices, or are located in certain geographical areas, or are engaging with your content through LinkedIn but not Facebook. When you have details like this, it becomes easier to narrow your focus and spend the most time and money on ads and content that will be seen by the right people.
Next, keep in mind that different segments of your audience will be in various stages of the buyer’s journey. For example, someone who is typing a general question into Google may be in the research phase and your ads and content should cater to that hunt for knowledge. Whereas someone who is searching for prices may already have made a decision to purchase a product but hasn’t yet decided where they’ll be making that purchase. When targeting this audience, your marketing efforts should focus on differentiating yourself from your competitors.
3. Not Funding Your Marketing Strategies Properly
According to research by the business financing specialists at Kabbage, not investing in marketing sooner is the top regret of business owners.
Underfunding your marketing strategy is a mistake that affects businesses in all stages of development, but it’s particularly harmful to businesses in their first few years of growth. The biggest difficulty a new business encounters tends to be acquiring new customers. Investing in strategic marketing is the best way to navigate this struggle.
For businesses that are well established and are having trouble remaining relevent, marketing is essential, yet funding those marketing efforts is rarely prioritized. Having a healthy and well-funded marketing strategy is the best way to solve for this problem.
4. Not Giving Your Marketing Strategies Enough Time to Produce Results
Sometimes business owners will assume that because digital technology evolves so quickly that digital marketing is meant to deliver results almost immediately. And if they don’t see fast or immediate results, they get spooked and pull out.
The mistake behind this logic is that while digital technology does move fast, the audience they’re reaching out to is human and it takes time for people to become engaged.
When taking steps into a new marketing strategy or trying a new channel, it’s important to keep in mind that audiences don’t immediately interact with content they see for the first time. Frequency of exposure is a vital part in successful marketing. It can sometimes take multiple points of exposure before a potential customer to engage with relevant content or ads.
Different companies have different viewpoints for how long this process takes. Some companies suggest that it takes 45 days for a person to retain the information you convey to them through marketing and campaigns should remain in place for no less than this amount of time. Other companies suggest that the most successful campaigns run for a minimum length of 3 months, potentially switching messages mid-campaign to avoid becoming stale.
5. Not Understanding Your Data
Data is vital to making logical business decisions that impact revenue, but often times business owners don’t understand what marketing data to collect, how to collect the data they do need or how to interpret the data once they have it.
The first step to fixing this mistake is knowing which data is important. This, in part, should be determined by your business goals which you then translate into marketing KPIs. When the data you’re collecting is directly related to the goals you’re trying to reach, it’s easier to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Second, you’ll need to decide which technology to invest in. Once you know what your KPIs are, research which tools you’ll need to effectively collect and track that data.
Implementing Google Analytics on to your website is the most standard practice for gathering a detailed amount of data about your web traffic. But if you’re running ads, sending newsletters, optimizing your content for search and trying to track the behavior of leads, you’ll need more sophisticated technology such as CRM software or Marketing Automation software.
Once you have a sufficient amount of data, it’s important that you understand the numbers you’re looking at. Data is meaningless without interpretation. It may take some effort to learn how to analyze data like this correctly. It may be worthwhile to invest in experts who focus on data analysis (like us!).
When you’re armed with information about what is or isn’t working in your marketing strategy, you’ll be able to change your focus and divert your efforts into channels that are working and tweek campaigns that could be performing better.
6. Not Asking for Help from Experts
There are some aspects of marketing that any novice with basic business sense can successfully engage in, and there are plenty of tools and resources online to help business owners jump-start their marketing efforts. But not investing in expert help when it comes time to employ a serious strategy is a big mistake.
You can google “basic car maintenance” or search for “symptoms” on WebMD, but those are no substitute for hiring a mechanic or getting a professional medical opinion.
Having a successful marketing strategy also requires professional opinions from time to time. Just like keeping our cars running and our bodies healthy, so too does a successful business require experienced minds to weigh in.
Business owners are likely to have a successful marketing strategy in place if they are literate in marketing strategy. It’s important to learn at least enough about marketing to be able to know when you’re talking to an expert. That way you can have confidence that you’ve hired the right people for the job.
Are you looking for more marketing advice? Then you’ll want to follow our blog. Are you ready to talk to some experts? Contact us to find out more about our services.