The aim of every business is to sell its products and services, and they do that by creating awareness of what they offer and how it can benefit people; this process is known as marketing- creating awareness of your products and services in order to sell and make profits.
All businesses requires effective marketing strategies to successfully sell their products, however, most business owners don’t know the effective ways to market their products, so they end up wasting finances marketing in the wrong way. In this article, we are going to discover the worst ways small businesses waste money on marketing. They are-
- Not narrowing down your target market- inasmuch as some products and services can be used and enjoyed by everyone, some of these products have specific people they are meant for. For example, if you are in a business selling cosmetics, definitely your products are meant for the female gender; if you are selling clippers, your products are primarily meant for men; if you are selling toys, despite the fact that parents would be the ones to buy them, that product is primarily meant for children, so it should attract them. When businesses fail to narrow down their target market, they would end up trying to capture a wider range of audience, who just might not be interested in that product, and it would cost higher when you focus on a wider range of audience, instead of a specific target market. This is one of the mistakes small businesses makes.
- Spending heavily on just one campaign- another mistake small businesses make in marketing is pulling all resources into one business campaign. Remember that advertising or campaigning is just to inform the general public of your products, and it is something you should do regularly, but when you pull most of your resources and spend heavily on just one campaign, you will end up loosing more than you will gain, and positioning the business in a difficult position where it would lack financial resources.
- Not tracking your marketing results- at the end of each campaign, you would definitely expect results which may come quickly or not. As a business, you should track your marketing results to know if your marketing strategy was effective or not. However, when you don’t track the result you get after each campaign, you would end up not discovering if your marketing strategy was effective or not, thus you won’t have the mindset of changing your marketing approach. This is another mistake businesses make in marketing.
- Not discovering what customers really want- in all products and services, customers have specific needs and want specific results; these becomes the reasons why customers would want to purchase that product or service. Another mistake business makes is focusing on what they can offer the customers and not discovering what customers want to be offered. So, when they market their goods based on what they have to offer and it’s not in line with what customers want, definitely there won’t be much success. However, if they discover what customers really want from that product or service, and market in line with those customers expectations, they would definitely attract the customers to the business.
- Not marketing enough- all businesses requires marketing; even well known companies needs to continue marketing, let alone a small upcoming business. Business owners needs to understand this and know that it would take time and the right marketing strategy to attract good number of customers to themselves. But when they don’t market enough or give up after marketing once or twice and not getting expected results, then the business would definitely not experience the necessary turnaround that effective marketing brings.
- Not changing your marketing strategy- some business owners fail to understand that the business industry is dynamic and change is always constant. Because this strategy is working today does not mean it would continue that way overtime, or because customers expectations for a products is this, then their needs and wants can’t change overtime. With this lack of understanding or misconception, business owners rely on the initial marketing strategy that worked for them, then when they start loosing customers to other companies, they start questioning what went wrong. Overtime, each business needs to review their marketing strategy and determine if it would still serve them effectively, or if they should adopt another effective approach.
- Not calling your prospective customers to action- with every advertising and campaigns, you ought to communicate a message, which is about how the products and services meets customers needs and expectations, then you ought to call your audience or customers to action- to come and purchase and enjoy the products or services. This is another mistake businesses make when marketing, and that is barely advertising the business, but not calling the audience to action. This can make potential customers just become aware of your business, but it does not drive the customers to actually come and purchase, because the invitation was not given, for all the customer may know, your products may not be available now, probably you just want to create awareness, thus the need of calling your prospective customers to action when you market your products or services.
- When you focus on branding your business and not on showcasing your products- this is another marketing mistake that mostly small upcoming business makes. It is normal for every business owner to want to be known and create a name for themselves and their business in the market industry, however, when you are marketing, your primary aim is to create awareness of your products and convince prospective customers to patronize you, so when you are merely creating awareness of yourself as a business owner and showcasing the business instead of the specific products, you would not get the expected results of marketing. Branding a business is good, but it is important to note that if you can increase your sales through advertising, definitely the word of your business would spread, so sales drives branding, and not the other way wrong.
In Conclusion
We have discovered 8 worst ways small businesses waste money in marketing, and end up not getting the expected results. If business owners can know these things, they would avoid them and market their business better, thus saving more in the process. Thanks for reading!