No matter how good, unique, or affordable your products and services are, if people don’t “see” it, they’re not going to buy it. The main goal of marketing is to promote your business’ products/services to entice people to purchase it. Although the concept sounds simple, there’s a lot of planning and resources involved to market a business’ products/services successfully; there’s a reason why marketing agencies flourish and why companies spend millions on advertising.
However, small and startup businesses can’t always afford to hire a marketing agency or invest too much in marketing, which is why it’s important to make every marketing decision count and avoid these common mistakes:
Not Having a Plan
One of the biggest mistakes you could make for your small business’ marketing endeavour is not having an actual plan. Don’t just invest blindly on whichever promotional materials and mediums are available and hope one of them works well enough to reel in customers — although it might work, you’d be wasting a lot of valuable resources. You should at least know what the following: marketing goal (e.g. building your brand, promoting a new product), your target market, what’s unique with your product, your pricing strategy, and the best strategy to reach your target market.
Forgetting (or Not Knowing) What Makes You Unique
In this competitive world of business, you’ll need something that makes you unique and stands out from the rest. That said, you should capitalise on your unique value proposition or UPV as marketing experts would say. Your marketing endeavours should feature and highlight what makes you different and why consumers should choose your products/services.
Not Having Online Presence
Majority of consumers have access to the internet and social media. As such, it would be a huge waste of opportunity if you don’t capitalise on using social media to market your business’ brand and products. Invest enough time and effort into your social media page to promote your brand and products as well as connect with your potential customers. Setting up your business’ website and registering your business in online maps (such as Google Maps) should also be treated as equally important as it allows your potential customers to come across your brand when they’re looking up particular products and services online.
Wrong Promotional Merchandise
The use of promotional merchandise is a common yet effective means of marketing your brand. However, one of the common and costly mistakes in marketing is promotional merchandise mismatch. Your small business’ marketing strategy and medium should be in line with the business in terms of practice, values, and target audience. For example, if you’re presenting yourself as a green small enterprise selling products made from recycled materials in Australia, you wouldn’t want to use promotional products such as disposable plastic bottles printed with your logo. The right way of doing it would be to use promotional products such as aprons with your brand’s logo printed on it to promote your small business which sells grilling tools and other kitchenware. Investing in promotional merchandise products using the wrong medium won’t only be costly in terms of money but can end up backfiring.
Conclusion
Marketing can make or break your brand. Wrong marketing decisions won’t only end up costing you money but may negatively impact your brand as well. So make sure that you’re aware of these common mistakes when promoting your business and the products/services you offer.
