Marketing can be one of those frustrating tasks for small business owners, feeling like you’re climbing uphill but never reaching the top.
Despite your best efforts, time can easily run away from you, and when you do get around to committing to your marketing, you’re often left wondering if it’s really worth it.
If you’re feeling unmotivated and frustrated and are often left feeling empty and unfulfilled, it might be because you’re making some of these mistakes.
Playing It Safe
Looking around different marketing channels, you notice someone marketing a little too much, and another hardly at all. You figure you’ll keep a somewhat low profile and not go too overboard with any flashy marketing or anything that could potentially fail.
Some people play it safe because they don’t feel confident, or feel out of their depth, not wanting to make a mistake that may lead to their efforts and money being wasted. This is fair enough, the last thing you want is to throw all of your hard work away and waste your marketing budget on something that has no return.
To help you confidently move forward with your marketing, we have put together a basic list of things you should know before you start. This will not only instil confidence to stop playing it safe, it will also guide you in what to say, when to say it, how to say it and where.
- Brand personality
- Brand positioning
- Brand style guide (including consistency with logo, website and social media)
- Target audience
- Buyer persona
- USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
- Key (and consistent) messages
- Best marketing channels for your target customers
- Best marketing strategies for your target customers
Doing What Everyone Else Is Doing
Sometimes when we come up with an exciting idea that hasn’t been seen in the industry or local area before, we can feel apprehensive. Great marketing stands out. We live in a very attention driven world, with videos here, and flashing lights there. As business owners, it can sometimes feel like the business with the biggest marketing budget wins. Not necessarily so. By avoiding blending in with what everyone else is doing and using the information from our list above, amazing ideas can be created that place you on a whole other level and get noticed for all the right reasons.
Inconsistency
Consistency builds trust. When your audience sees your brand consistently, you have the opportunity to build their confidence, set positive expectations and become a brand they feel like they can rely on.
Unless you hit jackpot with a viral post (which are generally only good for the short term anyway), marketing campaigns with real power will take at least three months to really start taking effect. By stopping, starting or letting a campaign fade away, you’re not only hurting the faith people have in your brand, you’ll also be compromising any chance of success the campaign had to begin with.
Impatience
There are three types of prospects – cold, warm, and hot. We find most business owners treat their cold and warm prospects like they’re hot and ready for business. Cold and warm prospects need exposure to your brand. Jumping straight into sales talk would be like asking a stranger on the street for their hand in marriage. Think of marketing as maintaining a friendship, you’re there as support when it counts, you help during the good times and the bad, and you don’t take more than you give.
Unrealistic Expectations
Doing business with you can be a huge commitment for prospects. If you execute a campaign expecting miracles, especially immediately, you will be disappointed. This is further empathised if your marketing is sporadic. Seeing viral posts and instant success is very much in the minority of marketing campaigns. How we see other people’s success as outsiders and what actually happens behind the scenes are often two very different things. When you see success, this rarely happens by chance; it’s usually a result of hard work, commitment, and very careful strategising behind the scenes. Great marketing takes time, commitment, consistency, and awareness of the steps to achieve a long-term goal.