Marketing Mistakes Every Business Needs To Avoid
When it comes to marketing you will find plenty of ‘how tos’ and must-have guides about how to get your marketing strategy right. Telling you what you should be doing to make your start-up stand out. This information is invaluable but what about the pitfalls? The marketing mistakes businesses make over and over again that will ultimately hamper all their hard work and marketing success. To stop you and your business from falling foul of some common yet avoidable mistakes consider this list.
1 Not allocating a marketing budget
Whatever size your company is and regardless of its resources failing to allocate some of that resource to your marketing endeavors will only hamper your efforts. Marketing your business is nigh on impossible without a budget and this is true even if you plan to do all of the marketing in-house or by yourself. The days of free social media marketing and organic growth are gone. If you want to make a social media splash then you have to pay to play. If you want to appear at the very top of Google then pay-per-click advertising will cost you.
Successful and effective marketing is a complex aspect of running a business, so much so that many companies will choose to outsource their efforts. It could be to a graphic design agency, a social media executive, or an all singing all dancing marketing specialist. All of these services are a great addition to your marketing efforts but guess what? They come at a cost and you will need to prepare your internal budget to allow for that cost. You may also need to allocate your hired marketing pros a budget to enable them to effectively undertake their role.
Regardless of the size of your marketing budget, the most important thing to do is to have one.
2 Lack of research
Bypassing the research stage of your marketing is sadly an all too common marketing mistake. The importance of market research cannot be underestimated. Carrying out your market due diligence will help you save money and time. It can enable you to better understand how your products, promotions, or services will fare before you even launch. Market research can help give you an idea of public feelings, needs, and wants which will ultimately allow you to design and craft your product, service, or campaign for success. Thinking about it logically it makes perfect sense, why would plow time, money, and hard work into a campaign that is likely to be poorly received by your target audience. Save yourself and do your market research.
3 No unique selling point
A unique selling point or USP should underpin every business. It is your position that sets you apart from the competition, and chances are there is a lot of competition. You need to be able to establish why customers should use your business over your competitors. You need a position that makes you unique and more desirable than any other similar business.
Businesses all over the world are seeking customers’ attention. The online world has saturated a market and made it easier than ever for a business to have a platform. If you cannot make your business stand out and make your potential customers know why your business is better your business will get lost in the crowd.
To avoid drawing in competition make sure you know your USP and then make sure your marketing team knows and communicates it at every possible stage of their marketing efforts. Your USP should guide almost all of your decision-making and certainly underpin your marketing decisions.
4 Ignoring existing customers
Another common mistake many marketers make is exhausting too much of their efforts to attract new customers. Of course, acquiring new customers is important and profitable but it is actually more expensive and time-consuming from a marketing perspective.
When it comes to repeat customers the hard work has already been done. They have already been attracted to your business, converted, and spent money. You have already started to build a relationship with them and they may even trust you as a brand. It stands to reason therefore that it is considerably easier to entice an existing customer to make a repeat purchase than it is to find new customers and persuade them to purchase. In addition to this the more a customer buys from you the more they are likely to continue buying. Don’t make this potentially fatal mistake and overlook your existing customers.