Small business marketing: How to stop wasting money in marketing

I hate to see how much money gets wasted into marketing. Especially when you're a small business, and you don't make as much as you spend on marketing, that's sad!

As an entrepreneur, I know how much you want to put your business out there, and that's fine. But I know how painful it is when you've spent so much money marketing your business, and you don't get returns.

I want you to know that you are not those big brands out there. So you cannot have their infinite marketing budgets because you're a small business.

You have to know that those big brands started small too, and they didn't start with such marketing budgets, so it's fine to start small.

It shocks me when I see how much money is wasted on digital marketing by small businesses. It is huge!

Small business owners waste so much money on marketing because they don't know how marketing works (especially digital marketing).

Digital marketing is very tricky. The truth is you don't have to spend so much to get results. Once you understand digital marketing, you wouldn't need to spend half of what you're spending, and you would get triple the results you're getting.

Here are five mistakes I see most small businesses making, and I want to help you avoid them.

Branding. 

Every small business wants to build a brand, and I understand why. What I don't understand is why they waste tons of money trying to build a brand.

Every business owner wants their brand to be like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, Mercedes, or Coca Cola, and that's great.

What's not okay is you not realizing that you're at the smallest stage of your business, and you're not those big brands. Yes, you can be those brands, but for now, why not stick with reality.

What you need to realize is "branding doesn't influence selling." No one cares about your brand.

They care about your product and how it can help them.

You must have heard all your life that branding is everything. Now I here am telling you not to waste money on branding. You must be wondering, "Why?"

Here's why "branding" is not the right approach to marketing:

1. Branding needs time and money. If you think about most of companies with great brands. You'll notice a pattern – they've been around for 30 or more years, and they have tons of money to throw into marketing. If you don't have that kind of money and time, branding is going to be a waste of your limited resources.
2. Selling influences branding, and not vice versa. Having a great brand might help selling, but its selling that builds a brand. People need to buy your product and love it, to talk about your brand solidly. These companies with great brands didn't just start advertising their brand. They created a great product. That had a ripple effect – they went from creating a great product, to selling it, and to creating awareness for their brand. Instead of wasting so many resources on creating a brand, focus on creating a great solution and selling more. Branding is one of the hardest, slowest ways to get sales. Instead of focusing on branding, focus on selling.
3. No one cares about your brand. This is the bitter truth, but no one cares about your brand. All people want is someone who understands their problem and can give them a solution. No matter how colorful your brand is, no one cares. Don't waste lots of money trying to build a brand no one cares about. It doesn't worth the time and money.

I'm not trying to say "don't brand." I'm saying wasting your time on branding isn't worth it. Instead of focusing on branding, focus on selling.

The mistake I see most small businesses make when doing their ads is making their brand the main focus. No one cares about your brand, so you probably won't make any sales. Instead, make your product the main focus and boom, you'll make sales giving people what they care about – solutions!

It's not about you; it's about what you can offer.

Until you learn that, you will continue wasting your time and money doing something that isn't effective and yielding.

Instead of focusing so much on branding, focus on how your product/service can make people's lives better. Once you focus on this, you will never waste more money on branding cause no one cares.

Building Products without Pre-selling

There was a time my dad wanted to start a business, so he decided he was going to start a "rice business." We had surveyed our entire audience to see what problem they had with the rice in the market. It turned out the rice was all stony and dirty.

So we decided to create a solution. We made cleaner and healthier rice. But after months of trying to sell it to our market, it just didn't sell as much. What was the problem? We don't know, but it just didn't sell.

We had wasted lots of money on getting rice, processing, bagging, and marketing.

But, we are not alone in this. Most businesses have this same issue – a great idea, but they don't sell.

The solution to this problem is to PRESELL.  

Don't create any product until you have sold a substantial amount of it. In the case of my dad's business, had it been he had presold, we would have known the rice was not going to sell, and we wouldn't have wasted so much money on it.

When you presell, you save yourself the risk of wasting so much money products that won't sell.

Not tailoring your ads to your specific audience

You will keep wasting money on Ads if you are not tailoring your ads enough.

Your ads should speak directly to your audience.

Digital marketing has made everything easy. You can pick where you want to run your marketing, who you want to see your ad, and you can also choose what time and date you want the ad to run.

Let's say you are a hair brand, and your main audience are women of age 25-50. You have an audience, but you have to still narrow further by knowing where your audience stays, what they do for a living, what they love, and how much they earn.

Let's say your audience stay in Lancaster. They are all entrepreneurs, they love soccer, and they earn at least $100,000 a year. Now you've got all this; you can tailor your ads to fit into your audience. Now, instead of targeting all women of the age 25-50, you will be targeting 25-50 years old self-employed women who earn at least $100,000 and love soccer. Voila!

You don't have to narrow down as much depending on your type of business, but you have to know your specific audience, so you don't waste money targeting people that don't matter to your business.

Once you're able to narrow down your audience, you will be able to create/build products and services that cater to your ideal customers.

Once you do this, your customers will feel like you understand them, and you can relate to their problems. Everyone wants to do business with someone relatable.

No call to action

I see lots of Ads on Facebook (beautiful Ads), but the problem is most of them never have a clear call to action, and I never know what to do.

No matter how beautiful your ad is, without a sharp and clear call to action, you won't get the turn up you deserve.

In your ad, you need to tell your potential customer what to do. Do you want them to call a phone number, click on the ad, visit a website, or take some other action?

Most ads drive me to a webpage, and I don't know what to do when I get there because their landing page sucks, and it doesn't tell me what to do. If you ads are driving people to a webpage or add, then that landing page must tell them what to do. If not, you'll get so many clicks, but not many sales!

You need to drive traffic to a page that fits with the audience you are targeting and has a clear call to action. Whether it is buying, calling, adding to cart, etc.

You want to make sure that wherever a potential customer sees your product/service or ad, your goal should be to get them to do something (one single thing). You can only achieve that by giving them no other options. If it's an ad, give them only one place they need to click or call (never both). If it's a webpage, put only one link on the page, and don't put any other links on the page.

If you do this, you won't waste so much on advertising. Your ads will drive as many sales and traffic as you want.

Developing an email newsletter that no one cares about

If you are developing an email newsletter, so your customers can sign up, and it can increase your sales, you are just wasting money.

No one, I mean, nobody cares about your email newsletter!

Can I ask you this question, how many newsletters do you sign up for in a month? And how many do you read or even click on?

After answering these questions, you'll see that you don't even care about newsletters. Your customers are not different!

You must have heard it before that "newsletters don't work," but you decided to develop it regardless, good luck!

Okay, let's be positive; let's imagine someone signs up for your newsletter. That means, every week, you have to send something.

You have to write content, format, get images, design, and test it all, then send it. I'm sure that you can't do that yourself because you have lots of things on your plates, so you have to pay someone to do it for you. Or you ask one of your employees to spend their time doing it, instead of doing other important things. It all bounces back to wasting money and time.

Ask yourself, how does all that effort help my business? It doesn't, no one cares about it!

You have to think beyond the box. There are better email strategies than newsletters. These strategies will help you develop stronger relationships with customers and drive sales from the emails you send.

A proven email strategy is to offer a free piece of engaging, lead-generating content your subscribers get when they subscribe to your email list. Using this strategy with a series of follow-up emails will cost money and time, but it will yield a stronger return in sales and traffic.

Related: How to Measure Your 2019 Content Marketing Strategy: A Year-End Review

Most businesses waste money on marketing, and we want that to stop. The goal isn't spending so much money on marketing, but more sales. Read this article two or three times and re-adjust your marketing strategy, and you'll see positive results without wasting so much money.

This article was first published on Adeife Adeoye

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