The 25 Worst Marketing Mistakes You Must Avoid

Marketing your small business is one of the most important jobs for any business owner.

Since there are several ways of marketing your business, it becomes much more exciting but also there are several times when businesses make mistakes that end up costing them more than money.

The mistakes are quite general, understanding more about them can help you in avoiding but also you can save your time, energy, resources, and money.

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Common Mistakes In Small Business Marketing

Marketing a small business is crucial, it does not just include how your business will grow but also targeting your market, and having the sales you want depends on that as well.

The basic reasons why the business do mistakes while marketing is –

Not doing prepper research – It causes not understanding what’s trending in the market and important points to add in the promotion.
Not using USP – Unique selling proposition is an important part of marketing, avoiding why the audience should buy can be the reason behind causing mistakes.
Not focusing on repeat customers – repeat customers do more purchases and consider them waste the opportunity to get more sales.
Not focusing on needs – customers focus on when the brands solve their problems, Thye feels more loyal towards them. Not considering this can make your marketing go in vain.

Even with the best planning, there are chances of making mistakes. When you are doing marketing for small businesses, here are some mistakes that you must avoid doing.

1. Not Having A Proper Plan

A marketing plan helps you in deciding the results and using the resources you have along with planning strategies to achieve it.

Without having one, there is a chance that you might end up getting results. But it will waste time and money.

Also without planning, there will be more mistakes which will make your efforts inefficient for your business.

2. Trying To Target Everyone For Sale

Not everyone is your customer, especially your potential customer. Investing in everyone is not something you should do.

It’s another mistake that you need to avoid.

Several new businesses consider everyone as their potential customers.

However, it can be true since your product and services have a larger audience.

But using marketing you can narrow down and understand who exactly your potential customers are.

3. Not Considering Word Of Mouth

For a small business, word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools that you should consider using.

The beauty of this tool is, it’s completely free and natural.

If your product and services succeed to attract and satisfy the customers. They will tell the product to more people they know. It can be their family members, neighbors friends, colleagues, etc.

4. You Don’t Have Online Presence

89% of the customer depends on the search engine when they decide to make a purchase.

There was a time when having an online presence was not that important but now in this new era when people are so dependent on Google to find their best products.

Small businesses focus on having their online presence which can be ranked and have good SEO as well.

In recent years, Social media bloomed as one of the biggest platforms for small businesses.

Not just it’s affordable, but with large numbers of people access, it becomes a more effective technique for marketing.

factors getting more social media engagement

Social media helped in maximizing the time and improving results.

Pro tip: Social media is two-fold. First, you need to pick the network and then make sure you know about your goals.

6. Not Taking Competition Seriously

Competition is important and it can help you in learning a lot of things. No matter how much you want to keep yourself away from the competitions, it’s something you should never do.

Competition can help you in learning –

Conducting your google search
Understanding what competitors are doing on source media
Taking research on market
Understanding marketing strategies your competitors are using.

Once you are done, you can take a SWOT analysis depending on who your major competitors are.

SWOT is for StrengthStrength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.

Defining each factor can help you in understanding more about the market and you get a better insight into your competition too.

7. Not Having Quality Web Design

Image source: Mockplus

Having web design is an important part of any website. It keeps your site look professional and gives the first impression of what you are selling.

58% of consumers avoid the brand when they encounter low-quality web design.

Also, a website that looks like it was built on Geocities doesn’t give a professional vibe to anyone.

Pro tip: Instead of wasting money, COnsider the principle of website design to ensure that you have images and quality look.

8. You Are Using Stock Photos

One of the major mistakes people do is using stock photos on their websites. Not just it doest goes well with that you are offering but also your customer doesn’t feel connected at all.

Using the real picture of real people can make your marketing 95% effective to your customer.

People don’t prefer watching models smiling and posing, they want the real you and the brand they are going to purchase from.

9. Not Trying New Marketing Style

Small businesses are often overscheduled. They have lots of work where they need to focus and they have many properties set too.

Having a routine can help sticking with that forever will make you complacent too.

Especially in marketing when it keeps changing. The only way to market your business is to keep up with all changes that are happening in the market.

Instead of focusing on routine, focus on tracking what is going to come next.

10. You Don’t Have Landing Page

Landing pages are important and there are no such things as ‘ Too many landing pages’ either.

The research found that if you have more landing pages, as it goes from 10 to 15, chances of generating leads turn 55% more than it actually is.

Pro Tip: To add morel landing page, focus on your tailoring your offers and making more of a granular segment

Social media is not 9 to 5, the customers there expect you to respond within 60 minutes.

Often business takes social media for granted and takes weeks and sometimes months to respond.

Not just you are giving the wrong impression to your customer. But also you are making them feel uncared too.

Pro tip: Monitor the tweets and comments. Keep it twice daily. Respond faster so you can show you appreciate their concerns.

12. Ignoring Questions

96% of first-time visions never purchase the product without gathering information and doing research about it.

Too often, the small business ends up not considering answering the customer questions.

Not just you are letting the opportunity to go where you can make your visitors into your buyers but also it shows that you are not concerned about them as well.

Pro tip: Take help from custom services to get the list of questions that customers ask most of the time and use it for your blog.

13. Not Checking Web Analytics

There are some devastating mistakes, and ignoring web analytics is one of them.

Without knowing how you are performing and if the tactics are working for you or not, it’s impossible to grow your business the way you want.

Ignoring web analytics can lead to wasting effort on wrong techniques and tactics instead of trying new ones.

Pro tips: To check the analytics, website traffic, other important keys, and traffic, Use Google analytics.

14. You Are Not Doing Guest Posting

To rank good on search engines like google, guest posting is one of the important and useful techniques you can use.

But it also improves your links by sharing the valuable content on different blogs for free.

Image source: heidicohen

Lots of people don’t add this to their marketing, and it should not be something you do at all.

Guest posting is an effective way of improving the authority of your website.

Pro tip: Focus on posting two guest posts per month. Target the website which has a similar audience and taste like yours.

15. Not Focusing On Quality Content

No matter how to advance the world because the content is going to be the king.

Without offering quality content you can’t rank on social media.

Image source: marketingland

Also quality content attracts more attention, with educating your customer more about what you sell. You get leads too.

Pro tip: to make it easier to target quality content, follow the content curation strategy. It will boost the buy-in as well.

16. Not Responding To Comments

Blogs, posts, and customer interacted content is useful for getting engagement.

If you are getting comments, it means you are getting attention too. However not using it wisely can make your marketing effect that much.

Also, focus on building a relationship as responding to comments can help in doing that.

Image source: falcon

When you respond to the customers, you show that you appreciate their effort to reach you out.

Pro Tip: Monitor the different content you post, especially blogs and posts. Make sure to remove the spam comment.

17. Using Embarrassing Hashtags

Image source: CBinsights

Hashtags are important for marketing on social media platforms. You can reach out to a different audience if you get your hashtags right and vice versa.

There are lots of examples where brands end up having embarrassing and make no sense hashtags.

Before you start making a hashtag, make sure you do the research and find the important points for creating hashtags.

Pro tips: Research your competitors and find the trending hashtags to get an idea.

18. Not Considering Existing Customers

Every business wants more customers. Often they focus their marketing strategy on attracting new customers instead of their existing ones.

The customers who are already your buyers can help you in getting more profit as they make more purchases as compared to your new ones.

Pro tip: Sent emails, deals, and exclusive offers to your existing customers to attract them for buying more.

19. Not Having Clear CTA

This is one of the most common mistakes that no matter how effective your marketing plans are, still you don’t get the results.

Not telling your customer what they want to do next and making it easier for them to take actions can reduce the overall effect.

The instruction should be clear, loud, and simple for your audience to understand and take fast.

20. Not Starting Planning Earlier

Marketing plans take time including converting leads and cold customers into a loyal one.

For a small business, getting a customer to buy from them can take months. Sometimes it can be longer than that.

Some products don’t need a lot of marketing as the price is quite down for considering and customers buy it anyway.

At any cost, you need to do the marketing before you are having to face the sales slump.

Customers need to be a part of the journey so they can trust you and buy it from you.

21. You Don’t Have A Balance

Balance here means you don’t know where to focus more and where to else. Either you stick with one kind of planning or platform instead of trying new options.

Your website is equally important as your social media platforms. Lots of businesses shut their website when they are getting the results from social media especially Facebook.

This is a major mistake. No matter what channel you use, in the end, people will visit your website. If you don’t have one, it means your business won’t have a solid base either.

22. Not Studying Before Hiring People

Even if you have the smartest marketing strategies, still not knowing how to do the marketing and when to do it can be your mistake.

People hire a specialist to do it for them. It’s good but not knowing much about marketing can put you in a tough place.

Here is the reason why you need to study at first –

You will know if the person is doing the job right or not
You will know the type of marketing suits you.
You will understand different marketing plans and options before paying.
You will know which marketing tactics are for your business.

23. You Are Targeting the Wrong Audience

Well, surprisingly you sometimes target an audience that destroys the whole point of marketing.

Not having a clear idea of whom you are targeting can cause you some major hassle in planning your marketing strategies for them.

Also, focus on who is buying from you and what are the major numbers you are getting.

This will help you in understanding the type of audience you have and what they want from you too.

24. Not Enough Offers

You can build a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy for your business without building offers.

The offers can be anything you like and feel that your customer will enjoy, for example, you can offer Ebook to Special coupons, etc.

Pro tip: use offers for getting the emails of your customer. It’s a wise tactic that can help you in email marketing.

25. Paying Less Interest On Keywords

Image source: hubspot

Keyword research is important. Without knowing that you can’t get the ranking on search engines.

Also, the keyword helps you in connecting with your right audience. It’s helpful for making your marketing effective.

Pro tip: For getting more insights, you can use Google Adwords to know what is trending in your market.

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

How can I avoid marketing mistakes?

Make sure to do research, test, use USP, capture the repat audience, etc. These are an important part of avoiding major mistakes in marketing.

What is the meaning of marketing?

Marketing is an activity that business takes for promoting what they are selling, it can be product or services.

It includes advertising, delivering, selling, etc. It’s a vital part of getting more sales, growth, and loyalty.

What are the concepts of marketing?

There are 5 concepts including – product, production, selling, marketing, and social marketing.