3 common ways small businesses have wasted money on marketing
“Waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both”
-Benjamin Franklin
Marketing has no fixed ratio on returns, you could spend millions on shooting new advertisements, redesigning your website, printing out brochures and setting up tradeshows – hoping to strike gold.
Unfortunately, it may not work even through you have a great product and you spare no expense in reaching your target consumers. It is so frustrating when business leaders fall into this trap and in some cases instead of re-evaluating their strategy, they invest more time and money to justify the sunk cost.
As the saying goes knowing is half the battle so here, we will talk about three of the most common money sinkers that plague small businesses
Rebuilding a website without a clear message in mind
Everyone likes new things; the novelty factor makes everything not only look better but feel better too. This the reason why app updates or UI updates generally include little tweaks to the looks of the interface even if the performance has no measurable difference. Redesigning a website is somewhat similar a competent designer can work wonders from just improving the overall look of your portal to making it give of a professional air but most of them are not aware of sales copy. The improved design can make your website’s content more noticeable or impactful but ultimately the core content which sells your product remains the same.
If you are relying on a design expert to modify the core content of your website then you are most probably wasting your money. Before you commit to a redesign of your website seriously consider how or if you would have to change the core content, don’t confuse eye-catching with effective.
Sponsoring trade shows without a solid one-liner
Setting up an exhibition at a trade show takes up a hefty chunk of your marketing budget (for a typical company about 30%) but in return you get the chance to interact with interested potential customers face-to-face and dramatically increase your brand’s reputation.
The booth looks great, the presenter looks nice, you have all the supporting data anyone can need to be convinced of the utility of your product but how can you make it stick in the minds of the customers?
The customers are not interested in how much horse power your product has or how powerful the processor in your device is they are interested in the benefit it provides them.
You need a one-liner: a well-crafted sentence that reflects the position you want your product to occupy in the customers mind and get them to buy it.
Firstly, this sentence will describe a pain point of your targeted customers, then it will describe how your product or service will help them solve that issue. Finally, it will describe how the customers life is now better for having used your product.
Once you have this one-liner, make sure all the employees who staff your booth can recite it correctly and can explain the product or service along those lines to the prospective customers, this way instead of getting bogged down with technical terms or being inundated with a lot of information which they won’t be able to recall correctly they can just remember your catchy one-liner.
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Unnecessary email newsletters
Email marketing has become commonplace every company, blog, service provider now asks you whether you would like to sign up for their newsletter or would you like regular notifications from them and I can confidently say that you reject the majority of such requests.
Nobody wants to sign up for more email newsletters! Our inboxes are overflowing as it is.
Honestly, how many email newsletters have you signed up for and how many do you actually open when you see them in your inbox much less absorbing their content?
Depending on the frequency you want to send your newsletter to your prospective customers you have to decide the topic which you think will attract them, research on it further to get the actual content, decide on the design, images, format etc.
These kinds of undifferentiated marketing strategies have very limited effectiveness, it’s time to go beyond the boring email newsletter.
One effective email marketing strategy is to simply offer free “lead generating content” to your subscribers when they sign up to your emails. Implementing these targeted strategies would take about the same amount of effort but will have far stronger return on investment.
Conclusion
Too many companies face these same issues when they start out, these issues can be easily avoided if they can get into contact with more experienced entrepreneurs or people in the same boat as them.
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