Marketing is an essential part of running any successful business. The exposure to a business profile can enhance its stature in the market and advertise the portfolio among the people. All the blandishments and strategies that come with a perfect marketing strategy is what drives growth for a business, be it small or large. The large marketing business owners have a humongous marketing budget. The Gartner research study found that companies earning more than $5 billion in revenue spend up to 13% of their budget on marketing. The SaaS major, SalesForce spends a whopping 49% of their overall revenue on marketing. With all these major organizations spending money on marketing, the small business owners are also not behind.
But we have noticed some major mistakes that they make while devising and executing their strategy.
- An investment: a major mistake made by small businesses is that they consider marketing as expenditure. Rather marketing is an investment that drives growth for your organization and increases the leads into customers. A well planned and executing marketing strategy skews the opinion of the people towards your business. We tend to decrease the marketing budget during a slowdown, which is wrong. Rather a slowdown presents the perfect opportunity to use this catalyst as a driver for growth.
- Plan deficient: another mistake made by small business is that they do not have a well-planned marketing strategy. Just shooting arrows blindly into the air won’t lead to fruitful results; it will only be a waste of your resources. Therefore, irrespective of the size of your firm make a plan and stick to it. A well marketed and developed plan will help you attain your targets. Involve a professional strategist scheduling appointments with him will lead to a better understanding of the market and its growth pattern. Moreover, it should be elaborative and followed to the minutest detail. The expenses of all the segments of the plan are to be incurred as per the plan; this will only help you in the future.
- The target: it really matters whom you are targeting with your marketing approach. If the boat lands on the wrong seas, all the expenditure incurred on its development and manufacturing will amount to nothing but a rumble of spare parts. It is essential that you target your advertisement campaigns, your content and website tools for the right audience. It is not important to follow the data and go after the most spending strata of the society. Know your product and know your audience, establish a link between them then only you can convert all those leads to sales.
- Be the herder and not the sheep: the small business owners tend to follow in footsteps of large organizations and address their product on the same lines. As big a mistake it is, this strategy is bound to fail and plummet down the sales. Rather give the audience a different reason to buy your product and let them know why it is unique, then only you can steer the market towards your products.
- Know your competitors: not only your business, there are thousands of home-based businesses which are set up every day and they all want to achieve success. Although it is not humanly possible to know about every one of them, you can know about your closest competitors. Recognize their product, identify their strategy, study their growth patterns it will help you stand one step ahead of them in the market.
- Maintain your market: It is highly recommended by all the marketing gurus that you cannot substitute your new customers for the older ones. As a major hidden component of marketing is the word of mouth advertising. This strategy can only be executed by your existing customers. If you somehow choose to neglect them in lieu of the new ones, it will not only harm your sales but can lead to disrepute in the market.
- No web address: most of the house business owners think that as they are operating in the limits of their city having a website is just another expenditure that can be utilized somewhere else. But contrary to this notion, it has been found those small businesses that have a website have a greater chance of success than those who are bereft of it. An online address has no geographical boundaries and through it, you can promote your business and interact with a higher proportion of customers.
- The devil is in the details: it may seem inappropriate and a waste of time to study the nuances of every customer and the percentage of growth that it generates for your business. The amount that you need to spend on various social media platforms for advertising and even recognizing the lifetime value of a customer, all these metrics can seem indifferent to the naked eye. But the real growth potential in them only. Study all the related factors know what generates higher profits and work on them in order to bypass every obstacle on your way to success.
You can consider these points as the mistakes done by the majority of small business owners or even as the pointers that need to be addressed to execute a fool-proof marketing strategy the end result will be the same that is driving growth and expanding your business.
Editor’s Note: This article is written by Charles C. Johnson. He is specialized in writing articles on online appointment topics on his blog. He is presently working at appointment care, a reputable presence in the digital marketing industry.
