These 5 Marketing Mistakes will Sink your Small Business

• Do you feel like you’re drifting without any real plan?
• Do you have a good sense of why you do what you do?
• Do you feel like you’re trying to sell to anyone and everyone?
• Do you feel like your business is a commodity?
• Do you feel stressed out by the idea that you are being asked to produce more content with less time?

You began your marketing with high hopes and launched it, excited to make the phone ring from new customers. Except those calls never came.

You attempted to fix it with different tactics: keywords, brochures, edited copy, email and the newest techniques from self-proclaimed “experts”. However, with each new “fix” you spent more of your time and money — but added no new revenue. You are low on budget and even lower on patience.

If this is your experience then you are not alone, almost all small businesses make costly mistakes when they start marketing. This is because the market penalizes you for mistakes you do not even know you are making. Even worse, in some cases, experts even recommend these mistakes. The more mistakes you make the more money you waste.

This article helps you identify these mistakes — and more importantly, learn how to correct them to put you on the path to profits.

Mistake #1. Not Identifying an Ideal Customer

This may be the greatest single mistake for small business disaster. Small businesses are often just telling their story to whoever will listen = everybody.

The problem with this approach is if you think everyone that breaths is your ideal customer chances are you’ll spend money in the wrong media channels and time at the wrong events or on the wrong platforms, wasting your greatest resources of time and money.

Instead, identify your ideal customer. Use your existing customer base to identify the characteristics of your best customers.

Here are the characteristics you’re deep diving for:

• Demographics — Business2Business (B2B) demographics could be the type of industry, the job title of that individual, the years that a company has been in business, and/or revenue levels. Business2Consumer (B2C)the demographics could be age, sex, illness, income, and a particular area of town.
• Psychographics — Understand where do they hang out, what do they read, what do they listen to, what do they search online, what makes them tick, what triggers them to go looking for a solution
• Challenges or Problem — Marketing is about solving customer problems, whether those are problems customers are currently facing, or problems they will face as their marketplace evolves and their needs change.

With that information, develop a detailed profile of your ideal customer. Then, show up in the media channels and in-person events where prospects that most closely fit the profile will be. You may be featured in fewer publications and meet with fewer people, but you’ll close more sales.

#2. Using Customer Expectations as Differentiators

Quite often I will ask small business owners to tell me what’s different about their business from others. The most common answers are, “we have the best price, we give our customers a quality product, or we have better service.”

I’m here to tell small businesses that communicating price, quality, and service are no longer strong enough reasons to differentiate your business for a potential prospect. These are all customer expectations.

The difference needs to be in the way you do business, how you package your product, the way you sell your service, the way you answer the phone, your appearance on a sales call, your signage, marketing kit, etc. — its all in the way you provide your service or product.

#3. Using a Typical Introduction

In marketing your small business, your job is to help the prospect understand and perhaps even feel how your business is different from every other business. And lacking this ability to communicate and capture what you do is a recipe to compete on price.

This mistake often occurs at networking events when small business owners or employees are asked, “So, what do you do or tell me about your company”

The typical bland response for many is to say . . . “I’m in the cleaning business, I’m a consultant, I’m a plumbing contractor or I’m an account specialist.”

Your response needs to communicate and capture what you do, who you help and the results they get. [Example] “I show sales reps how to close more deals.” “I help young couples retire rich.” I teach divorced women how to manage money.” “I give wealthy individuals peace of mind.”

#4. Assuming Branding is Just a Logo

It’s popular nowadays to put all your eggs in one basket — but even if your logo is eye catching and interesting, it can’t shoulder the whole load of your brand. And it means nothing if potential prospects are frustrated once they experience your brand.

Just as important as getting the logo right is creating an experience that customers love. That’s why your business must strategically identify and deliver a great experience in the many ways that prospects and customers come into contact with your brand.

Think through all the ways customers and prospects can come into contact with and experience your organization. A great place to start is to identify these three core areas: marketing touchpoints, sales touchpoints and service touchpoints.

Mistake #5. Creating Content Without Intention

Almost every small business has heard about the need to produce content in marketing has grown as today is more about being found — earning attention — and less about going out and hunting.

That’s why at some point, companies must accept that they’ll need to view its production from a strategic point of view. See, the secret to success with content isn’t quantity — it’s intention. If you create content with the intention of finding ways to address business objectives — create awareness, educate, build trust, convert and refer — you’ll likely create an asset that provides a return.

In other words, you need content for every aspect of the customer journey and the best way to employ this is to match different kinds of content with the customer journey.

Most small business owners view the customer journey from a very traditional and outdated point-of-view with stages such as Awareness, Consideration, and Purchase, but I consult on executing a much more modern and effective approach in this “customer centered era” we live in today: Awareness, Education, Sample, Purchase and Refer.

So, your content-customer journey might look something like this:

Awareness Content — Generates awareness with your target market

When your target market is not aware or doesn’t have top-of-mind awareness of your company, product, service or the benefit it offers, then the first objective is to create awareness. The key element here is educational content created on a set of keyword phrases and topics that potential prospects are already searching for online.

Awareness can be built through:

• Blogs, articles or infographics published on your site and third party media outlets
• Testimonials from happy customers
• Reviews on sites like Facebook, Google, and Yelp
• Advertising that draws attention to your educational content

At the heart of every transaction is TRUST and in general, trust is what’s in short supply. If more people trust you, everything else will fall into place.

There’s a really big gap between someone being aware of you (which is really hard) and someone trusting you, enough to invest in you or buy from you.

Educate Content — Demonstrates expertise, value proposition, knowledge, resources, and experience

As your target market becomes aware of you and the competition increases, prospects will be eager to find out much more about your unique approach, your solution, your story and your organization. And if you don’t give them a something, you’ll get compared on price.

At this stage you need to you need to educate those prospects that want to learn more and social media participation plays a role here:

• eBook — not boring, dry technical stuff, your best insight over all the other typical information
• Newsletter — Weekly or monthly education that nurtures their interest
• Presentation — in person or online, these allow prospects to learn as well as engage
• FAQs — some people just need the answers to their questions and this format serves well
• Case Studies — some people just need to see that others have had similar situations and got the result they desired

People want to be educated not sold. They will sell themselves if you just commit to educating.

Sample Content — Represents a sample of the end result

You’ve done all this work generating awareness and educating now show your prospect in the form of content a very tangible representation of the end result.

This is where most organizations stop their content marketing but you should continue it if you want to keep the modern prospect engaged.

Help your prospects understand what they’re potentially buying, and create raving fans out of those that don’t ever buy. The experience alone will cause them to share with their network.

• Cheat sheets
• Audits
• Working Sessions
• Workbooks
• Assessments
• Checklist

Purchase Content — Orientates a new customer

For this stage, the focus is on using content to keep the experience high. Think about what your customers now have access to when they yes in the form of content.

• New customer kit
• Access to “behind the scenes” content
• Quick start guides
• User manuals
• Result worksheets

Refer Content — Arms happy prospects and customers with referral ammo

Generating referrals all boils down to developing a formalized process. It’s important for you to systematically and automatically integrate referral content into the everyday interactions with prospects and customers.

• Coupons
• Gift certificates
• Referral video
• Lunch and learn presentation
• Collaborative presentation with a strategic partner
• Business cards with a referral offer

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