Marketing your business or products can be challenging in that you can never be quite sure what will appeal to consumers. There are tools you can use to improve the accuracy of your market research to reduce some of the risks in creating effective marketing campaigns.
Additionally, here are a few common marketing mistakes that entrepreneurs and business owners make.
1. Failing to Build Up Momentum
Possibly one of the most common and worst things business owners do is to lapse in their marketing attempts. This is also common with entrepreneurs who tend to handle everything themselves. They either think they don’t have the time to spend marketing their brand, or they may feel overwhelmed by all of the choices available to them.
However, repetition is the key to any successful marketing campaign. Even if it just means making a series of social media posts each day, you should always be doing something to market your business. When you have a larger budget to pay for premium advertising, buy ad space. In a tighter month, use social media and your own blog as free marketing resources.
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2. Ignoring Consumer Feedback
Social media, review sites, and other online resources provide a means for consumers to interact with their favourite brands. It gives each consumer a voice and provides a way to interact with business entities. As a business owner, it’s up to you to determine how much weight you’ll give to those voices.
As many businesses have discovered, ignoring consumer feedback can be detrimental to the growth of your business. That’s not to say you must obey your customers, but you should read their feedback and determine when to respond to them. A simple like or share may be enough to engage with your customers and encourage their continued loyalty.
3. Failing to Reduce Customer Churn
Marketing to your current and past customers is just as important as attracting new consumers to your business. If you’re not keeping customers, the new customers you attract won’t count towards your business’ growth. Even though many business owners fail to address this issue, it’s not a complicated marketing mistake to correct.
Sometimes, getting past customers back is as simple as sending them an email to let them know about an upcoming sale. You can also earn customer loyalty by reaching out to recent customers to inquire about their satisfaction with their purchase. If they’re unhappy with some aspect of their interaction with your business, you’ll have the opportunity to make amends. If they are happy with their purchase, your inquiry will leave them feeling valued as your customer.
4. Failing to Use Targeted Ads
The days of marketing to the general public and casting a broad net are long over, but many business owners still try to follow this philosophy. Unfortunately, you’ll be wasting a significant portion of your advertising dollars by doing this and getting very little in return.
By identifying your market demographics and targeting those groups specifically, you’ll get greater interaction from your paid ads. The increased return on your investment will help you accomplish more with a lower advertising budget.
5. Inconsistency
While diversity is important in terms of using different types of print and digital marketing, your overall theme should be the same across all platforms. This includes using the same colours and brand logo to create a recognizable brand identity.
Your ads should also promote the same philosophy or values to ensure your customers will associate your business with those values. Due to the importance of consistency, many businesses hire marketing or branding companies that can help them create consistent marketing campaigns.
This is especially helpful if you want to create an ad campaign that promotes a cause, such as positive body image or breast cancer research. Professional marketers can help you come up with ads that will link your brand to that cause in a meaningful way. Since consumers value brands that express corporate responsibility, this type of marketing campaign can be highly effective.
Conclusion
While it’s easy to get discouraged, you should never let a few mistakes defeat you. Instead, look for the reasons your marketing campaign failed so you can create a new strategy that sidesteps that mistake. In that way, you can refine your approach until you have a solid marketing strategy that works well for your business.