Top Marketing Mistakes Business Owners Make

Are your marketing and advertising plans performing far below expectations? There are several mistakes business owners tend to make in their advertising efforts from not having a strong value proposition, not understanding their audience, to not having a clearly defined strategy. Here are some of the reasons why your marketing may be lacking, and ideas on how you can improve it.

You Don’t Know Your Ideal Customer
The first thing you’ll want to find out is who your ideal customer is. For example, if you’re in the printing business, you might need to think about whether you want to target small businesses or larger companies. You may discover it’s more profitable to target smaller businesses in your area as your main clientele. It’s up to you to analyze your business structure and model it after what type of customer you plan to market to.

Differentiating Yourself from the Competition
If your marketing doesn’t communicate how your business is different from similar products, why would people do business with you in particular? You need to let your consumers know what your business does differently and why you’re a cut above. The key is to state a unique proposition that communicates clear advantages in a sentence or two. For example, Dominoes used the hook “hot pizza in 30 minutes or less or it’s free” to clearly distinguish themselves from their competition. What can you come up with?

Lacking a Clear and Focused Marketing Strategy
Many business owners dabble in multiple things to generate business, but it’s often a much better idea to hone in on what’s working the best and maximize those results. For example, if you’re already doing well with social media, try to get the most out of that particular platform instead of dabbling in other things like search engine optimization, pay per click, etc. Once you feel like you’re doing the best as you can, it’s time to tap into other advertising channels to increase your revenue.

Stay focused on your clients and customers and don’t go too far off base with how you reach them.

Finding a Follow Up System
Many businesses fail to follow up with their prospects. Just because a customer didn’t do business with you the first time around, doesn’t mean they are a dead end. It often takes multiple follow ups for prospects to convert into customers. For online campaigns, this may mean using email autoresponders to send a series of emails to educate prospective clients and promote your offer throughout the process. For offline campaigns, it may mean using direct mail, post cards, handing out business cards at events, and phone calls to follow up on qualified leads. Make sure any follow up you use is professional. Third party email services can make auto emails look personalized to clients and physical advertising should be made unique with things like 4 Color Print embossed cards or 3D fliers.

The above are just some of the mistakes you could be making in your marketing strategy. Luckily, they can be solved with just a few simple solutions. It’s a matter of analyzing your marketing and figuring out what’s missing.