Marketing mistakes can cause problems in any sized organisations but for small businesses digital marketing mistakes can represent a huge percentage cost to the marketing budget. No matter what sector you’re in, marketing can make or break your business. To succeed in marketing, you need to have in-depth knowledge of what to do, as well as what not to do. This is especially true for small businesses, as you’re already stretched thin and as have a very limited margin for error.
Please take a look at our small business marketing tips below and find out how to avoid these critical mistakes small business owners make when marketing their business online.
Ignoring The Need For A Website
There are plenty of small businesses still run their digital marketing entirely through social media. This is one of the biggest marketing mistakes. It is true that social media can inform and entertain your target audience but as soon as any of your content hits social media, you lose your rights to decide what happens to it. You know the old adage about building your house on sand, well the same rules apply here. A poor foundation is no foundation at all.
Failing to Invest in Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the most powerful tools available to market your business in the modern marketplace, yet nearly two in three small businesses (68%) still aren’t taking social media marketing seriously. Why? Unsurprisingly, small businesses don’t have time and resources to invest in social media marketing. So how do you tackle this problem?
There’s a wide range of posts on how to improve your social media strategy, but here are the core fundamentals you need to establish for an effective social media marketing strategy:
- Identify your audience
- Start small; focus on one platform at a time
- Select key success metrics
- Analyze your metrics
- Create a social media marketing plan and use it
Building A Website And Then Forgetting About It
Having a company website isn’t enough. You need to keep it updated on regular basis. You have two important audiences to cover with a website, your prospective customers who will want up to be kept updated with the latest information, and the search engines, which will give you a far better placement in their rankings if you have a regularly updated website. Including a regular blog on your site is one of our top small business marketing tips.
Ignoring Existing Customers
In these days of social media following and website hits it can be very tempting to ignore existing customers in your excitement about gaining new ones. However, one important thing to remember about existing customers, they have already been interested enough in your products or services to buy from you once. If you don’t sell to them again, someone else will. So keep your existing customers in your radar as well.
Ignoring Competitor’s Marketing
If you operate in a busy marketplace you will find it difficult to work out what marketing your competitors are doing and even harder deciding what is working best for them. One of the greatest small business marketing tips is to focus on the marketing tactics of three or four of your rivals and, maybe more importantly, which campaigns they keep or drop, you will gain invaluable information about what works for your marketplace and what doesn’t.
Failing To Utilize Data
Most small business owners are great at monitoring sales and performance but one of the key marketing mistakes is to miss out on the vital information that marketing analytics can bring you. It’s simple really, if you don’t take note of which of your marketing efforts bring in the optimum results, you won’t be able to make informed choices about where to spend your all-important resources next time. A word of warning here, digital marketing analytics do tend to be on the technical side. If you find yourself out of your depth, don’t ignore the issue; seek help from an experienced digital marketing company.
Digital marketing success does not come easily but, with a carefully planned and structured approach, it can come within the resource capability of most small businesses. These small business marketing tips can help you to avoid some of the most common marketing mistakes but for the best in industry developments and years of solid marketing experience we recommend that you consult one of our experts.