5 Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Marketing is an important element of your small business strategy. If you're looking to expand your customer base, boost revenue, or grow brand awareness, a savvy marketing strategy is a must.

However in the course of any marketing plan there are a few mistakes that may hinder the marketing process. These 5 mistakes that are commonly made by small businesses can actually sabotage your goals, rather than support them. In this article I'm going to show you simple solutions for turning these mishaps into wins.

1) Talking about yourself.

Your company just had its fifth year anniversary and you even won an excellence award. You think your customers care, right? Not always. A rather very common misunderstanding among young entrepreneurs is believing that you and your customers value the same things. What can you do for a customer that no one else can? To successfully market your small business, don't sell the customer your product or service; sell them your solution.

Market research, even basic, is very helpful. Consider crafting a simple survey with SurveyMonkey, or polling a small focus group. Online crowdsourcing can be an inexpensive alternative to focus groups. These basic research methods can give you new insight, and help you shape your marketing message to focus less on you and more on your consumer.

2) Forgetting your current customers.

You've put all your company's resources into advertising. Are you spending so much time focusing on attracting new customers that you're forgetting about your current ones?

It's common for small businesses to think they must grow through growing their customer base, but you can target current customers, too. There are many different ways to stay in touch with your current customers after the sale. Email is one method that is inexpensive and can yield high success rates, but be sure to follow a detailed guide to small business email marketing. Your email should have certain elements, such as relevant and useful content, to be successful.

3) Social media abuse.

Social media marketing is the most important weapon in your arsenal. It is an inexpensive tool, effective marketing solution, enables you to share relevant content with your audience and is a must-have for most small businesses.

However, starting a Facebook page and sending a few tweets isn't enough. Social media marketing is a complex marketing tool, and if used the wrong way can actually harm, rather than help, your small business.

What you need is a detailed social media strategy for your marketing campaign. First, understand how to use social media effectively, and then, create a social media marketing plan. Use your marketing research to understand where your customers are online and create a brand presence there. Only communicate relevant, helpful information to your followers; never spam or you'll quickly lose friends.

4) No call to action.

When a potential customer sees your ad or comes to your website, what do you want them to do? Subscribe to a newsletter? Sign up for a promotion? If you don't include a call to action button your customers won't know what to do with the information you've given them. And your customer won't spend his time trying to figure out what to do next; s/he will simply move on to your competitor. And if they move on, they are gone forever.

Using a call to action button on your website is one simple strategy. These are coded buttons that drive a webpage visitor to "click here" to sign up for a newsletter, or whatever your intention is. If you don't take the initiative to help your customer find you, they won't find you at all.

5) Not measuring what really matters.

No matter how small your business, you should always be measuring success. This is how you evaluate performance and also gives the company marketing goals to works towards.

There are simple, inexpensive strategies for small businesses to track marketing return on investment. Leveraging a few different techniques is necessary to understand how your marketing efforts are paying off. You want to be sure you have a good idea of what marketing strategies are more effective than others, and how they all tie into the bigger business goal.

Even as a small business, you can still have a creative, inexpensive marketing strategy. Avoid common marketing mistakes, make smart decisions, and your small business can have a successful marketing strategy, too.