Three Mistakes That Waste Small Business Marketing Resources
Poor small business marketing is one of the major causes of early small business failure. Poor small business marketing not only fails to get new and loyal customers, it also wastes small business marketing resources. Three major reasons account for this waste.
1. Not investing in small business marketing research.
2. Not targeting the people most likely to become customers.
3. Failing to create a small business marketing plan to guide your business.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 1: Not Utilizing Small Business Marketing Research.
The first mistake is not investing in small business marketing research. Small business owners are reluctant to invest resources up front to conduct product development research, competition analysis, and market segmentation.
If you don’t have insights from research, you are more likely to build your business and marketing on bad information that decreases your chance of marketing effectively.
Furthermore, without research to guide small business marketing decisions, business owners are less likely to approach marketing strategically, are more likely to make individual disjointed marketing efforts, and are less likely to win new and loyal customers.
Every penny that you spend on good research is money well spent. This is particularly true for research to determine your best potential customers, and the best way to market to them. Failing to acquire this information is the second major way that you, as a small business owner, may be wasting marketing resources.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 2: Not Identifying The People Most Inclined To Buy Your Products Or Services.
If you don’t want to waste your marketing resources, you need to pick a target market and direct all your marketing to them. Otherwise, you market to everybody and don’t sell much to anybody.
No matter what you think, everybody will not want or need what you sell. Marketing to those who won’t ever buy from you just wastes your limited small business marketing resources. Instead you should spend all your marketing resources reaching the people who comprise your best potential market.
Thus, your investment in target market research will return you much more in sales, and save you from wasting your marketing money on tactics that don’t work well.
In addition, target market research enables you to:
focus on your best potential customers,
learn as much as possible about these potential customers, and
design small business marketing campaigns to reach potential customers at least seven times within a year.
Target market research will help you to better understand:
the members of your target market,
the kinds of media that reach them,
their information needs and effective appeals to include in marketing messages,
how much money they spend and how to price your product.
If you know this information and plan marketing campaigns with it, you’ll improve return on investment and avoid wasting your small business marketing resources.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 3: Failing To Create And Follow A Small Business Marketing Plan.
This third mistake results from the first two. Without the proper research, you can’t have a good marketing plan. And without a good marketing plan, you will more easily fall for sales pitches.
Some small business owners believe that the only reason to complete a business plan is because banks require them for business loans. They fail to recognize the value of a business plan to guide their business, much less a marketing plan to guide their marketing.
This results in failing to determine the marketing strategies and investments that produce the greatest positive return on investment (marketing ROI). Not planning what small business marketing strategies will best lead to marketing goals, leaves small business owners easily distracted by sales people.
In order to keep your marketing efforts on track, you must have a marketing destination. You must know what it will take to get to your marketing goal, or you risk contributing to sales people’s sales goals more than your own business and marketing goals.
Some mass media sales people approach new business owners, convincing them to buy advertisements that primarily reach the wrong people, and sometimes reach few people because of the time or placement of the advertisement.
The same is true for sales people who offer marketing products and services. If you don’t have a marketing or business plan, you will fail to recognize when these are inappropriate for your target market. When you buy products and services that don’t advance your business toward your marketing goals, you waste resources and sacrifice the opportunity to use those resources on tactics that would reach your goals.
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Tags: blog, Business, link, Links, market research, Marketing, media, money, Products
