Is Your Business Making These Marketing Mistakes?

If your marketing isn’t done properly, you’ll fail to attract customers. Below are some of the common marketing mistakes that businesses make – and what you should be doing instead to succeed.

Marketing without a USP

Standing out from your competitors is essential for attracting customers. Your USP (unique selling point) is the attribute that makes you stand out. It could be that you offer lower pricing, faster service, better quality or that you have a more inclusive experience. Whatever the case, it needs to be clear and should make up a big part of your brand. Without a USP, you’re likely to blend in with competitors and fail to make an impression. USPs offer a unique angle that is more likely to make you noticeable.

Casting your net too wide

When marketing your product or service, don’t try to target anyone and everyone. It’s easier to market a product or service with a specific demographic in mind than it is to market to a general audience. Even if your company appeals to lots of different demographics, consider creating different campaigns targeted at these demographics. For instance, a city hotel may benefit from launching a marketing campaign targeted at traveling professionals and a separate one aimed at tourists. 

Not embracing new methods

Marketing is constantly evolving and taking advantage of new forms of technology. If you refuse to embrace new methods, you could lose out to competitors and possibly be viewed as old-fashioned. A few new forms of marketing that every business should be embracing include social media marketing, SEO, online video advertising, and blogging. Make sure that you’re not clinging onto old defunct methods like brochures, phonebook adverts, and cold calling. 

Focusing solely on new customers

Many companies rely on a steady stream of return customers in order to survive. Make sure that your marketing efforts aren’t just aimed at attracting new customers. Marketing strategies for encouraging return customers could include loyalty schemes, email subscriber lists, and SMS subscriber lists.

Doing it all yourself

Don’t try to do all of your own marketing. There are many specialist marketing tasks that are better handled by professionals such as web design, video advertising, and app development. If you know nothing about marketing, you may be better simply hiring a marketing company such as Cardinal Digital Marketing. Only take on marketing tasks that you have done your homework on and have the resources for. 

Failing to track performance

It’s important to track the performance of your marketing campaigns – if you don’t, you won’t know how well they’re doing and whether to repeat the same strategy. There are different ways to track the performance of a marketing campaign. You could survey customers to find out how they came across you. Alternatively, you may be able to track analytics of data such as website visitors, ad clicks, email opens or sales figures to help get an idea of whether a marketing campaign is having a positive effect. This post at Ruler Analytics offers more tips for tracking marketing campaign performance. 

What are some methods you have used to market your business that have worked for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Photo by Mikael Blomkvist from Pexels