Even with a business coach on your side, marketing your brand and product/service requires a lot of time and resources from your company. Add to that the stress and challenges of the other aspects of your business and it’s easy to fall prey to mistakes and oversights in mapping out and executing your marketing strategies.Before you consider working with creative firms, business owners should have an idea about what could go wrong in marketing your brand. To help you avoid pitfalls in marketing your business, we collected some of the biggest mistakes that small and medium-sized enterprises make and how to overcome them.
Not Targeting Your Audience
Whether in your print ads, videos, or digital presence, every marketing effort should be focused on reaching out and creating a common ground with your audience. Segmenting your audiences as well as crafting messages and designs that are relevant to them should be a major priority.
To segment your audience, you can separate your buyer personas into distinct categories depending on their status in the buying process, psycho-demographics, and other research-based data. Don’t assume you know everything about your audience. Instead, take the time to do market research.
Hard-selling Your Business
It’s not uncommon for businesses to go overboard in using a hard-sell approach to marketing their products. After all, since you’re spending money for these efforts, there should be a return on your investment, right? Unfortunately, that’s not how it works because, in general,l consumers don’t like it when businesses take this aggressive approach.
Instead, understand that marketing isn’t about forcing people to buy; it’s about subtly building a genuine, long lasting relationship with them. Why not try demonstrating value by creating content that they’ll like? Or creating well-executed advertisements that clearly demonstrate the benefits of your product/service ?
Trying to Accomplish Way Too Much
Marketing is about achieving specific goals by effectively reaching out to your audience. By compounding various messages and using a lot of channels, your marketing strategy loses focus and direction.
Effective marketing is more than just throwing everything you have at an audience and hoping something sticks. It needs to have a defined purpose. Stick to your strategies and don’t overextend. By trying to accomplish too much, you end up reaching fewer goals as you spread your attention and resources thin.
Failing to Analyse Your Efforts
Your marketing efforts should be constantly monitored and scrutinised for effectiveness. Know what campaigns, messages and channels perform for your company. Find out why and use the information to improve upon your content, design and medium.
There is no such thing as a surefire way to market brands, products and services. Conduct research instead of sticking with what you know. On digital platforms, use metrics in finding out what works. Failing to innovate means your brand can’t keep up with your audience.
Giving Up on Your Initiatives
Some businesses easily give up on their campaigns and initiatives. Note that different mediums and messages catch on at different rates. Marketing doesn’t always translate to direct sales but it could help keep your brand top-of-mind among consumers. If an ad or your blog isn’t an immediate hit, find out why and then try to improve upon it or replace it with something more effective.
While your marketing might not reap immediate rewards, you’ll be taking some positive steps towards long term success if you avoid the marketing pitfalls above.
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