What many don’t realise from the get-go, is that having a great product or service is only part of what makes a business successful. Many forget that the other key aspect that leads to the success of a business, is in fact, marketing and ensuring you have a solid marketing plan/strategy/focus at that.
Utilising a clear and concise marketing strategy within your business leads to many positive effects, from reaching new audiences to building brand awareness, increasing engagement and ultimately profits.
However easy this may sound, many businesses in fact make small (and crucial) mistakes when it comes to running a successful marketing campaign. These unseen errors can in fact be the reason why a business is not progressing/succeeding and it’s best to avoid these practices going forward.
Let’s take a look at a few common mistakes that businesses/brands often make, so best to be avoided.
Not targeting effectively
Today, using ‘spray and pray’ marketing techniques, or the ‘fishnet approach’ simply won’t cut it and is in fact, not effective marketing. Basically what these two techniques boil down to is sending out, for example, email advertising, to as many people on a database as you can find, in the hopes that it will reach as many people as possible.
Yet time and money become wasted when a business is trying to attract a large, untargeted audience, instead, it’s better to focus on a select/core audience. In this way, you’re ensuring that your product and service reaches a market that shares an interest, or potential interest in the product/service you are offering them.
Not using professionals for big projects
As your business begins to grow, so will your team, but in order for you to reach a wider audience, you may be faced with a campaign too big for your current team to handle. This is where sometimes, using a small team can be detrimental to the quality of the campaign, instead, it can often pay-off in the long run to use a professional marketing service/team/agencies such as Wizard.
This digital marketing agency is committed to giving small and medium businesses a platform to advertise themselves in the way the big guys do through effective marketing techniques.
Their aim is to increase both brand awareness and sales through tried, tested and successful digital marketing techniques, which include a Business Audit, Market and Media goals through creativity and videos, as well as Performance Marketing and Optimisation.
Not attracting repeat customers
Attracting new customers is of course, exciting, but remember, repeat customers are loyal. Oftentimes, businesses forget the importance of focusing some of their efforts into attracting customers back to them, which pays off in the long-run.
There are certain efforts that can be made in attaining this, including one very basic question: What does your customer want?
What are the needs of your customers that you are serving and do you meet these needs? Is there anything else you can be doing in order to meet these, even if it means having to re-evaluate certain aspects of the business/brand?
Remember, your customers are returning to you for a reason so it’s important to engage with them.
Not doing research
One of the most important tools we have at our disposal these days is digital data statistics and analytics. Think about how easy it actually is to do your own bit of research, with one click of a mouse and the Google search bar and you can find just about anything.
Not doing proper research leads to no prior background knowledge, which can result in things such as not knowing how much to charge for certain products, when to run campaigns during the year, which audiences are being targeted with specific marketing…the list goes on. And it’s all easily accessible online, do the research.
Making yourself the budget option
Who doesn’t love a good deal? Running promotions and discounts can be fantastic, but for a certain amount of time only. Constantly advertising such deals can also create an image of the brand where people perceive it to be a ‘budget-option.’
Of course, if your brand image is that of a budget-friendly one, then go for it, however, one must consider that returning to normal prices after extended discounts will result in the loss of sales, as this isn’t what customers now perceive of your business, nor expect from it either.
Plus, it costs to constantly spend money on these sorts of campaigns.
