5 Marketing Mistakes Businesses Must Avoid Making in 2020
Small business owners are beginning to understand the importance of the digital world and social media marketing. It’s no secret that marketing is likely to become much more analytical and broad over the next 12 months. Businesses that use social tools as part of their marketing strategy and track their leads will make the biggest strides over their competitors. Despite this fact, there are still common and avoidable mistakes that are being made. I decided to identify some of the most common ones that I have seen keep many businesses from seeing marketing success.
Not knowing your audience
Many small businesses run marketing and advertising campaigns on a regular basis without having a grasp on their customer personas. If you don’t know who your ideal customer is, then you don’t know what it’s going to take to motivate them to become your customer! This leaves you targeting the wrong demographic, with a generic message that doesn’t appeal to anybody.
The most important part is identifying your audience personas and developing key messages and campaigns for each one. This might sound like a lot of work, but it is only done once and then utilised throughout your business for years.
Not having a content marketing strategy
Content marketing is currently your hottest ticket to rising above the noise! It gives businesses an opportunity to tell their story and to become an authority on their subject. Being an authority is vital as it builds trust and trust is something that customers make purchasing decisions on. If you’re giving out advice, sharing engaging stories and information that is of genuine use or interest, you build a tightly connected community of customers who are loyal to your brand.
Not to mention that good quality content is now a necessity for SEO. Long gone are the days of writing poor quality, keyword-loaded copy on websites and blogs. Context, meaning and genuine, quality writing is what search engines are crawling your website for.
Ignoring new technologies
The most successful companies leverage every marketing channel they can. You can’t stick the same old platforms and strategies and then wonder why you’re not reaching your audience. Change is inevitable and your strategies have to follow and reflect this. The digital world is constantly evolving and businesses need to adapt in order to connect with their audience. Studies show that retailers that took advantage of multiple channels were more profitable than those utilising only a single channel, so now is the perfect time to expand your reach!
Not following the 80/20 rule
When I talk about the 80/20 rule, I don’t mean 80% diet and 20% exercise, although that appears to be the golden ratio too! I’m talking about the Pareto Principle. Whether your focus is content marketing, social media or email marketing, 80% of your effort should be spent on providing value to your audience, leaving 20% of your effort for promotional activity! This will help to keep your audience engaged, while building a long-term relationship.
Ignoring retention marketing
Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with the goal of attaining new customers and in the process put customer retention efforts on the back burner. This needs to change quickly! Retention marketing should be at the backbone of your strategy because it’s always easier to sell to someone you’ve built a relationship with. It’s also much more profitable to sell to existing customers with the selling probability sitting at 60-70% versus the 5-20% range of selling to new customers. Loyal customers become brand ambassadors, so re-invest in marketing back to them!
Not prioritising your philosophy
This is the single biggest mistake I have seen small businesses make. Not paying enough attention to the message you are crafting and sending out to your audience about your brand can be detrimental. You need to carefully think about how you want to be perceived by this group of people that knows nothing about you. What does your brand stand for? What are its values? And, why is it the best option for your consumer? This message needs to be present across your entire business because when it comes to marketing, it’s not just the channel that matters: it’s also the message.
If you think you might be making some of the mistakes above or you want to see how well you score on our digital test, contact us today!