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The 8 Digital Marketing Mistakes you Might be Making in Your Small Business
Small businesses have a little margin for error (so to speak), they have to get everything right the first time. Any little mistake, and you are out of business, which is why you need to equip yourself with the right knowledge so as to get it right the first time.
Such mistake can cost both time and the little resources available. When it comes to marketing, there is different ways to reach your desired audience, you just have to know where they are and how to reach them.
However, while trying to reach your audience, there are some mistakes you need to avoid that will help you save time and resources. It is possible that you are not making this mistakes yet, that is good. To avoid suffering from them later, it is ideal that you consider the point highlighted below.
So below are 8 mistakes to avoid in your digital marketing journey for your small business before it is too late.
1. You don’t have a Website
Many small businesses do not have a website. In fact, SCORE says that “Just 51% of small businesses have websites”. Some business owners think that owning a website is not important especially if they are a local business.
Little do they know that a lot of customers search online for products and services before contacting businesses. This means that before clients visit your business, they might have search online to get little information about you.
One thing that discourages small business from getting a website is the notion that it will be expensive. To deal with this, dozens of companies have stepped forward to make website creation easier and more affordable. Companies like Wix, GoDaddy, Weebly, Squarespace and many, many more can help.
2. You have no Marketing Plan
The same way you create a business plan when starting out, you also need to get a marketing plan.
For a small business, time and budgets are short, so there’s an urge to skip as many “unnecessary” steps for marketing as possible.
So, planning out your marketing strategy, the specific tactics you’ll use, how much they’ll cost and how much time they’ll take dramatically increases your chances for success.
You can plan and write out a good marketing plan in an afternoon. In that time, those 3-5 hours could be worth doubling the effectiveness of your marketing budget.
3. Being Scared of Social Media
A lot of persons spend long hours on social media, which makes it a great place to meet your prospective clients. So if your business is not on social media, you are making a huge mistake.
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Social media provides one of the most affordable and effective marketing techniques for small business owners who can focus their efforts and maximize their time spent on social media to yield big results.
The trick to using social media to promote your small business is two-fold. First, you need to select the right network, and second, you need to be clear about what your goals are.
4. Trying to Sell to Everyone
As a small business, you will like to reach as much persons a possible to as to increase your chances of landing a large customers base. However, it will be a big mistake to you to consider everyone as your client.
While it may be true that you sell a product or service that appeals to a broad audience when it comes to marketing you need to narrow down your target to a recognizable group so you can use messaging and marketing approaches that reach them directly.
5. Underestimating the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing
When you finally get your product or service to the public, word of mouth marketing should be your first point of call. This method of necessary because it is free and it happens naturally.
If you are able to reach the heart of your customers with your product or service, their is a high chance that they might market your business to there family and friends. This in turn will increase your customer base. And not only does it bring in new customers, but it can also result in ongoing repeat business.
6. You Avoid Tracking Results
As your business begin to grow, you might find your result overwhelming and avoid tracking them. But it is important to track your result as it will help you know what strategy works or does not work.
Whether it’s not tracking goals on your website with Google Analytics, or not tracking conversions through your pay per click ads, or not tracking calls and foot traffic from a big sale or advertising investment, if you aren’t tracking, you’re throwing your money away.
Tracking your results, also help you learn from your mistakes. Worst of all, if you don’t track, then there’s really no way to improve. That is truly a waste of a marketing budget.
For example, System ID, a small business in Texas, realized that a large number of the customers who converted after clicking an ad, came in on keywords directly related to a subset of their products.
Be redirecting a portion of their budget to acquire these customers, they were able to reduce their cost per click by almost over 20% in less than 3 months, while getting in touch with more of their highest value leads.
7. Trying to reach the wrong audience
Even though you want to reach a lot of people and get your product and service in front of them, market to the wrong audience will do you no good. It is just a waste of time, efforts and resources.
Some business owners have such a clear, focused view of who they want their customers or clients to be that they can be completely blinded to the customers they actually have. So research and focus more on the clients that are more likely to patronize your business.
8. You blew your budget on just one thing
At the early stage of your business, you have little resources to work with, it will be very bad for you to spend it on a strategy you have tried before.
This mistake happens an awful lot, especially when owners have their launch budget. They’ve got this nice lump of money, and they think if they invest it in this one big thing, it will help to get them to break even faster.
So before choosing the right marketing plan to fly with, try to research as many strategies as possible to be sure of the right one for your business.
What are the 4 Errors in Marketing?
Biased research, caving to opinions, internal fatigue, and moving on too quickly — these four mistakes in marketing, at any point in the process, will hamstring the work, derail campaigns and strain agency/client relationships.
Learning from these mistakes, we can handle future situations differently, improve the work, and consistently deliver incredibly effective marketing campaigns.
1. Caring about things consumers do not
It takes research to design a successful campaign, but marketers often begin this process with a particular outcome in mind. Instead of searching for the right answer, confirmation bias causes them to construct research that validates their preconceptions. They set themselves up to solve the wrong problem rather than using the research to make better-informed decisions.
When companies live in a vacuum of constant talking points, it can skew outcomes based on what they care about internally rather than what their customers care about. A car battery company might want to talk about their product’s cold-cranking amps, special chemistry or new package design because they’re proud of them.
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But consumers want to know if it’s dependable, will their car start when they need it to and can they get one nearby. If the company forces its own talking points into the campaign it risks being ignored and consumers feeling like the company is out of touch.
Avoid bias
Stay open to discovering whatever insights come back. The answer is the answer no matter what we expect (or want) to hear, and trying to validate anything else is a fool’s errand. Marketers need to marry what they want to talk about with what the consumer actually cares about. This is where agencies can be a valuable asset: They provide brands with an objective, outside voice.
2. Caving to pressure and losing conviction
If I launch well-guided, strategic work for a client, but a friend I trust questions the logic of the campaign, I may find myself in a tough situation: Do I listen to the friend, give in to pressure and modify a well-researched, vetted and tested strategy? That would be a mistake.
Campaigns crash and burn when stakeholders let opinions and pushback challenge their work and convictions. No matter how excited a client may be about the path they’ve developed with their agency, it can all go pear shaped the minute a campaign goes live and they choose to listen to a few squeaky wheels.
We have seen client leadership go back and change well-conceived work after a few peers questioned the logic of messaging they weren’t even the audience for. Short sighted decisions like this not only challenge the team’s convictions around the campaign but is also incredibly de-motivating.
Listen to the right voices
Being focused requires some degree of sacrifice — not every idea, consumer, and opinion can be part of a campaign journey. When Cadillac realized its audience was aging, they changed their design language and marketing to appeal to younger generations — a conscious decision to leave behind their old consumer base to embrace a new, younger one. No worthwhile decision will make everyone happy. Do the right research, target the right people, and trust your process to succeed.
3. Internal campaign fatigue cuts execution short
Internal wear-out can end a campaign before it really even begins. Agencies and clients spend months and sometimes years developing campaign work. That’s a ton of time spent with the same ideas and messaging. Time that the consumer hasn’t enjoyed yet. It’s no surprise then that often soon after launch, someone inside the client/agency bubble is tired of it already.
Creatives, in particular, are usually eager to shake things up and move on to something new. The risk is that they can throw the baby out with the bathwater and move on from great work that would have been highly effective.
Give it time
Give a campaign time to breathe and prove its worth. When measuring effectiveness, evaluate the media spend and time to audience saturation against any internal fatigue it may generate — and plan timelines accordingly. Regularly review the campaign’s creative content with the marketing team, stay attentive to their morale, and keep messaging from becoming old hat at the agency.
4. Ready to move on too quickly
Closed-mindedness, losing conviction, and campaign fatigue all tend to come together in this mistake, ultimately leading to difficulties in execution. Mistakes build negative momentum and put a strain on stakeholders, who feel eager to move on to the next campaign, and then the next one, and so on. This attention deficit shifts focus from campaign to campaign too quickly before each one can fully develop.
About 15 years ago, we helped a client develop their tagline and positioning of “outrageous dependability,” which spoke to both their product and level of service. Several different CMOs have come in since, wanting to put their stamp on things and pursue a new tagline. Interestingly, their market research draws the same conclusion every time — “outrageous dependability” has stood the test of time.
Stay the course
Introducing anything new into the consumer consciousness will come with pushback. Not everyone likes change. If you’re committed to taking a bold new direction and have done your research and due diligence, then believe in that investment. Change for the sake of change is never a good solution. Only by giving a campaign the time it needs to play out can we truly evaluate whether or not it’s successful.
FAQ
What is the 3-3-3 rule in marketing?
In marketing, the 3-3-3 rule is a strategic framework designed to simplify campaigns and maximize brand recall. It suggests focusing your efforts on 3 core messages, targeting 3 audience segments, and prioritizing 3 primary distribution channels.
What is a common mistake to avoid in marketing strategy?
A common mistake in marketing strategy is launching campaigns without clearly defined, measurable goals or failing to research the target audience. This often leads to wasted ad spend, vague messaging, and an inability to track your return on investment (ROI).
What is the golden rule of marketing?
The biggest golden rule is to carefully identify what your clients need and want, and then to show them that you can provide them with the service that will meet those needs. You need to have a direct connection with your target market to get the best return on investment from your marketing spend.
What is the first rule of marketing?
The first rule of marketing is simple: you are not the customer. To build an effective strategy, you must deeply understand your target audience’s specific needs, pain points, and buying behaviors rather than relying on your own personal preferences.
Source: linkedin.com
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