Common Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Marketing is not an exact science, so marketing mistakes are inevitable. However, startups and small businesses work with limited budgets, and cannot afford to make too many marketing mistakes. Read on to learn some of the most common marketing mistakes, and how to avoid them.

Don’t Spend Money on the Wrong Channels

You need to know where your prospective customers are before you spend money marketing to them. There are many different marketing channels, but that does not mean that you have many different marketing options. Different audiences use different channels. You need to figure out where to find the kind of people who want to buy what you are selling. Only then will you know what kind of marketing to use and where to send it. Rushing ahead without understanding who your potential customers are and where you can find them will result in nothing but wasted money.

Don’t Spend Money on a Big Marketing Campaign too Soon

You might think that a big spend on a primetime ad during a popular TV program or a big booth at the trade show will make your business take off, but you need to start slow. You need to build brand awareness before you do something like that. If you don’t, you’ll accomplish nothing more than throwing your entire marketing budget out the window. In all likelihood, your message will be off-target, you’ll seem too amateur, or people will ignore you because they don’t know you. Take the time to do the research before you invest in any large marketing campaign. Spend small at first. Go with low-budget options such as content marketing and free video until you have some experience with the business and have some name recognition.

Don’t Spend too Long Perfecting the Details

A lot of business owners get overcautious. They spend too much time tweaking their website design before launching it. They rewrite blog posts over and over and never post anything. They go past the point of due diligence and spend so much time micro-targeting their messages that they never send them. Investing in brand asset perfection will do nothing more than waste your time and funds. Instead, you need to get things rolling as soon as you can and tweak things as you go along.

Don’t Chase Your Competitors

Don’t make the mistake of doing what your successful competitors are doing for marketing in the hope of replicating their success. You will come off looking amateur and derivative. You will be seen as a cheap imitation. Your potential customers will find your message boring because they’ve already heard it before. And anyway, your competitors are probably successful because of a number of factors, not just their marketing.

As long as you take the time to do the necessary research, gain the necessary experience, and learn from your mistakes, you can rest assured that your marketing strategies will work for you instead of just waste your money. This is how you build truly positive, wide-reaching brand awareness.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out our other posts on A Big Digital Hug.

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energepic.com from Pexels