Many people spend years and an untold amount of money learning how to market their products and services appropriately. Although excellent marketing can help anyone improve and grow their business, poor marketing can impact your success in a negative way.
No matter how hard you try, you will never avoid making mistakes entirely. In fact, accepting that you’re not perfect and never will be can help prevent discouragement.
But you must still do your best to minimize the amount of errors you make so you can get the most from your efforts. It’s good to learn from your mistakes, but it’s even better to learn from the mistakes of others. Avoiding the following pitfalls will work wonders to help you run your business more efficiently.
Complicated Website
Even if you only run a local business, it’s vital to have a website and to maintain it. A lot of new business owners make the mistake of overcomplicating their site. They include tons of pictures, graphics and other distractions. Those things will improve the look of your content, but they will decrease your sales.
People can only focus on so many things at one time, and having a lot of bells and whistles on your sales page will distract people, preventing them from buying.
Poor Customer Service
When a customer receives poor service, they will stop doing business with you. That’s bad enough, but they are also likely to tell all of their friends and family to do the same. When a customer is upset and has a complaint, many people make the mistake of approaching the situation logically, which rarely works.
When customers are angry, their emotions are often in the driver’s seat of their decision-making process. So, the first step is to acknowledge that you understand their feelings. Once you have addressed the emotional needs of your customers, you can work to find a logical solution.
Focusing on Yourself
People often feel proud of their businesses and the accomplishments they have made, and they should be. But it becomes a problem when you focus on yourself more than on your customers and their needs. Getting people to view your content takes precious time and money, so you want to make the most of each visitor.
Focus your website and content on addressing and solving the needs of your market, and only use stories about yourself when you can do so in a way that relates to helping people solve their problems.
Not Testing the Market
Just because an idea sounds amazing to you, doesn’t mean that it will sound amazing to your potential customers. Investing resources into creating a product without testing the market is like playing Russian roulette.
You might get lucky and launch a product that generates a massive amount of revenue, or your creation could fall flat. Avoid that problem by doing market research and by discovering what your customers want from you.
Not Using Email Marketing
Unless you have a well-known brand that has become a household name, people are not likely to buy anything from your website the first time they view it. If you want to increase your conversion rate, then implementing email marketing into your business plan is vital.
It allows you to contact your customers repeatedly, offer value and build relationships. When you use email marketing the right way, your leads will start to like, trust and respect you, increasing their likelihood of making a purchase.
Final Thoughts
Taking an honest inventory of yourself, your business and your marketing plan is not always easy, but doing so will help you learn and grow. If you are making any of those mistakes, take corrective action right away. A few small changes can improve your success and help you optimize your business.
