Marketing is one of the most important and exciting aspects of business ownership for any company, no matter what industry it’s in. Without a good marketing strategy, there is no way for customers to hear and know about your goods and services, or about the nature of your organization at all. Marketing can make or break your business.
Small businesses and startups need to change their perspective and strategy on selling.
You may not have thought much about your marketing strategy because it’s easy to put on the back burner when you are starting a new business.
You should test your marketing first, and then build out your strategy based on your testing. The testing is likely to take at least one month if not longer depending upon the marketing you’re doing.
Mistakes that Startups Make
Here are some common marketing branding mistakes you might be making as an entrepreneur.
- Not developing a brand voice.
- Overcomplicating things.
- Lack of Consistency.
- Getting distracted by different ideas.
- Being too careful about taking risks.
- No Professional Help.
- Expecting fast results.
- Not Passionate about your business.
- No Plan and Vision.
- Do not pay attention to cash flow.
- Do not thoroughly research the market and business before they are got into.
- Going too big too fast.
- Innovating too much on the product.
- Do not track and evaluate results.
- Don’t measure the KPIs.
- Not hiring a marketer and thinking that marketing is not a priority.
- Don’t track what your competitors are doing.
- If you are not researching the right audience.
- Not owning your product name.
- Not having a number of options to reach out to you.
- Not having a real website with a real domain.
- Having a website that does not appear well on phones and tablets.
- Not Understanding Customers.
- Not Anticipating Market Changes.
Some business owners think they don’t need a website because they are local businesses. However, 97% of consumers search online for products & services, and more than half of searches are local. People will (or won’t) find your business online before they ever go (or don’t go) to your business.
If you don’t track, then there’s really no way to improve. That is truly a waste of a marketing budget.
Keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Even if they aren’t in your town, find at least three other businesses like yours that are doing well. Study their marketing strategies.
Not Tracking Results
If you don’t track, you really don’t know what works. Whether it’s not tracking goals on your website with Google Analytics, not tracking conversions through your pay-per-click ads, or not tracking calls and traffic from a big sale or advertising investment, if you aren’t tracking, you’re throwing your money away.
Failing to realize that you need to be very good at everything not just be an expert in one field. i.e. You need to be the generalist rather than the specialist.
Failing to promote benefits over features. i.e. customers buy what’s beneficial to them and give them a better life. They are blind to the exotic, outstanding, and competitor-beating features that may have become your obsession.
Your marketing might get people to notice you, but branding is what keeps them there and converts them into a sale.
Not Creating A Marketing Plan
You can’t just expect customers to find your website. Those days are long gone. You have to figure out how your customers are going to find you. And you’re going to have to figure out how you’re going to nurture these opportunities into leads for your business.
Much as it is necessary for a business plan to start a business venture, a marketing campaign also needs to have a specific plan to succeed. What certain business owners fail to understand is that a business plan is different from a marketing plan and that for their marketing strategies, every business should have a formal written plan.
A marketing person should be brought into the loop at the very beginning of the product idea to check to see if there’s a big enough market for it, and then develop a program around that. Many disastrous products could have been stopped in the germination stage because of this, and many great products were positioned so poorly that they struggled and died because of poor marketing. So bring your marketing team into the loop when you have an idea for a new product.
To Conclude you need to have a comprehensive understanding of industry best practices, as well as a knowledge of the common errors that you can avoid, in order to succeed in marketing. This is particularly true when you are a start-up company, as your margin for error is very limited; any mistake will plunge the growth of your company downwards.
