Common Marketing Mistakes with Small and Medium Businesses
Here at The Little Marketing Company we help lots of small and medium businesses with their marketing. However, when working with them we all see some of the marketing mistakes they have made in the past. Many of these are common marketing mistakes that can be easily avoided, if only the business owner knew to avoid them.
In this blog post we have put together some of the most common marketing mistakes that small business owners make. We have done this to help you avoid making these mistakes in your business. Some of the mistakes you have already made, and that is no bad thing. You learn from the mistakes you make, but that doesn’t mean you have to make all the mistakes to learn!
- No Marketing Plan – instead of creating a marketing plan with goals so businesses know what they are working towards, there is no plan and more ‘just hope’.
- Too Busy Doing Business – it’s a hard thing to manage. When there is work to do for your clients your own marketing can fall to the side. But this means when that client’s work is finished there is no marketing to attract the next clients.
- Didn’t Work – marketing doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about building trust and brand awareness. You can’t tell after a month or two if social media marketing, magazines or radio adverts work for you. It takes time.
- Wasting Money – you need to track your results from marketing. If you have been sticking at something for a year and it’s still not working you need to be aware of this; otherwise you are wasting money. You may need to change the marketing approach or marketing channel – but you need to track results to be aware of this.
- Mixed Messages & Branding – early on you need to choose your brand, tone and voice. You then need to make sure you stick to it. Make sure your brand and messages are consistent across your website, email marketing, social media, adverts and more.
- Relying On One Channel – One channel will not do it all for you. You need to opt for more than one marketing channel so you can compare ROI and see which ones work best for you. Different marketing channels will achieve different things and attract different audiences too.
- Waiting For business – while some business will come to you from word of mouth, you will need to attract a lot of business too. Waiting for business to come to you will not work. You need to market your business and attract the right customers.
- Not Investing Time In – you need to invest at least 4 hours a week into the marketing for your business. Make sure you take the time out to work on your business instead of in your business and you will notice the results.
- Market to everyone – this is the most common mistake from business owners. Marketing to everyone will get you no one. You need to determine your target audience and your main customer for your business. Once you nail this, you will be a step ahead of everyone else!
These are just some of the biggest marketing mistakes that small businesses make. If you would like to discuss your marketing, or find out how you can avoid these mistakes and others, call our team. We can book a meeting with you and talk about all the biggest marketing mistakes in more detail to help you avoid making them yourself.
