Marketing a business is one of the most exciting parts of the job. What makes it so exciting is that there isn’t just one way to market a business. You can come up with thousands of ways to market your business leading your creativity in many different directions. Strong marketing tactics can connect you with the right customers, get the word out about your company, introduce your product or service to the media, and set up your business for financial success. Sounds great, right? 

However, while marketing is a fun part of the job, thoughtless marketing can do just the opposite of any of those awesome accomplishments above. Better yet, marketing errors happen all the time costing businesses quite a lot of lost revenue and expenses. 

So, it’s important to avoid these marketing errors at all costs. But how? How do you know your marketing your business the right way? How do you know you aren’t making any mistakes. Well, the truth is no one is perfect, mistakes are going to happen. But, what we can help with is avoiding common errors. These are errors we’ve picked up on and have found many businesses are guilty of doing. Today, we’re laying out the common errors businesses make when it comes to marketing. 

Not Having a Marketing Plan: Without a marketing plan, you’ve automatically failed. By not having a marketing plan, is like trying to drive a car with no gas. Every business needs a marketing plan. We encourage you to take your time, research and review, everything you can when putting this plan into place. While somethings come out successfully on a whim, many do not. 

Being Unclear About What Makes You Different: This is something many businesses struggle with. Customers want to see what makes you different from the competition. Why should they buy your product over theirs? How is it better? Obviously your business is not exactly like any other business out there. If it were, you probably wouldn’t have started the business in the first place. Start from the beginning and think about why you started your business. Think about what makes you different. 

Trying to Capture and Sell to Anyone and Everyone: While having all of the people in the world under your belt would be a cool thing, it’s very unrealistic. One very common mistake of new small business owners is considering everyone to be a potential customer. Praise you for wanting to be an overachiever, but you need to focus harder on finding your people. We encourage you to narrow down your target audience to a recognizable group so you can use messaging and marketing approaches that reach them directly. Marketing to a group of young professionals and to a group of senior citizens can be different, even though they both may be interested in your product. 

Failing to Capture Repeat Customers: Remember those people who were there for you from the very beginning and are still there for you now? Those people are super important and can really help you when creating your marketing plan. Listen to their needs, their comments, and their feedback it can really help you. If you can’t keep your current customers happy and intrigued how do you expect to do that with new ones? 

Ignoring Your Competition: It’s important to take note of what is out there and who you are competing against. While you want to make sure you are differentiating yourself from the competition, there is a lot you can learn by scoping out your biggest competitors. 

Now that you know what to avoid, let’s see you get started. At 325, we can help! Check out our services page for more information: https://www.weare325.com/services/.