We all make mistakes; however, when it comes to marketing your business, even the smallest missteps can be devastating. The stakes are high and with so many opportunities available for ambitious entrepreneurs to get their name out there and increase customer engagement, it’s crucial that you stay mindful of what’s working—and not working—for your business.
Most business owners who’ve been around for a while have a “horror story” diary of marketing mistakes, places where their marketing strategies went wrong. Whether they lost big or lost small, they all learned valuable lessons with those mistakes
Rather than follow along their footsteps and make the same marketing mistakes, why not learn from them?
That’s the purpose of today’s blog post. Here are just a few (there are so many others) common marketing mistakes that have been found time and again to ruin good marketing strategies.
Common Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
These aren’t listed in any particular order–no single mistake is any higher than another in this list. However, they’re all important to pinpoint and fix if you’re going to have healthy marketing practices:
1. Ignoring SEO
You can’t afford to move search engine optimization (SEO) to the back burner. You might say, “Of course you’d say that, you do optimization for a living.” That’s true, but that also gives us ample opportunity to see numerous companies come limping in, having given up on the “no SEO” idea.
“Help us rank,” they say. “We can’t even get people in the front door.”
Can SEO be expensive? Yes. Hiring a marketing firm can be costly, depending on your needs. However, there is plenty of information online that allows you to get your foot in the door. In this way, you can merge your burgeoning knowledge with the guidance of a consultant. If you have the time, this is a much less expensive way, you learn more, and you start to learn what works and what doesn’t.
2. Ignoring Local Search
Whether you have a local business or a global one, local search is an important place to focus your attention. Claiming your Google My Business page, for example, gives you the opportunity for extra space in the search engines. You can’t beat no-cost/low-cost space on the search results pages.
3. Ignoring Beginners
Even in a space such as online marketing–where it seems like everyone should know everything there is to know already (and everyone has written it all out)–there are hundreds of thousands of people that say, “What’s that?” when you tell them you’re an online marketer or a search engine optimizer. In other words, there are always beginners. There’s always someone who doesn’t know a bolt from a nut, a monkey wrench from a spanner, a hammer from a mallet.
How can you cater to those people? For us, it’s easy. Beginner’s Guides are easy to write up, providing serious, step-by-step information on how-to [enter your topic here]. Beginners who learn from you have a tendency to become lifetime fans. Don’t leave them out!
4. Ignoring Competitors
Your competitors can help lead the way to success before they fall behind. While you don’t necessarily want to do everything they do, paying attention to what they do can provide valuable information. Who’s linking to them, for example, and can you get a link from the same people? What kind of information are they offering that seems to get a lot of traffic?
Competitor research has been around for centuries, and for a good reason. Learning how they get where you want to be is the first step in taking over and dominating.
5. Ignoring Loyal Customers
Loyal customers should never be taken for granted. Providing benefits for continuing to be a customer allows them to feel like they’ve chosen the right company. Never forget to show your gratitude.
At the same time, if you decide to change your pricing structure or how you do business, consider a grandfather clause–or at the very least, letting them know your structure will be changing. Of all the people you don’t want to alienate, the loyal customer is top of the charts. It doesn’t take much for a loyal customer to become a case of bad reputation.
Final Thoughts
There are so many marketing mistakes you can make that it’s hard to cover them all. The above are just a few–a very common few–that can sneak into your business and marketing tactics.
Remember: it’s not always what you do that can mess up your strategies. Sometimes what you don’t do–what you ignore or forget to do–has far reaching consequences.
If you need help pinpointing the holes in your marketing campaign, contact us. We’ve been helping companies build robust marketing campaigns for more than a decade.
