5 Common Marketing Mistakes

Marketing is something every business needs but is something not every business knows how to do. Marketing isn’t simple and requires thought, consideration and a real plan. While you are getting your business in play and therefore your marketing plan, there are some common mistakes businesses make that we don’t want you doing.

Here are five common marketing mistakes you don’t want to make:

Not doing your research:
Just because you have a good idea for a business doesn’t mean it is going to be automatically successful. In fact, just like when you had to research school, you have to do it for your business. You have to research what your business sector is doing globally, what competitors are doing, what your audiences need and the like.

Not investing:
This can refer to many things, such as money, time and people. The old saying goes, ‘you have to spend money to make money’ is still true when it comes to your business. It doesn’t help to go cheap on everything, in fact, some things you need to spend more money on than others. That can also refer to people, you have to invest in the right people. Those with the skillset you need and even those you may not think you need. You also have to invest time into your business and not just treat it like any job or a side project.

Not using analytics:
Analytics will be your guide to knowing everything about your business and your audiences. Analytics are a great tool to making your business succeed and not all businesses are taking advantage of it. With analytics, you can see who is on your site, where they are from, what their interests are, how old they are, how long they stay on your site and more. And if you aren’t taking advantage of all that free information, then you are making a mistake.

Not adapting:
Not adapting can be related to many things, in this day and age, it tends to be all digital related. For example, a lot of companies don’t believe they need to be on social media because ‘businesses survived before it.’ However, you need to adapt to survive and the world is adapting to social media. Not only that, but you have to adapt to the ever-growing types and forms of social media. You have to be able to adapt to new types of environments, people and those people’s beliefs. You have to adapt to most businesses being reached online, even more so on mobile. You have to be able to adapt to video, influencers and whatever else may come about.

Spreading yourself too thin:
This is a big one, for big businesses, small businesses, new businesses and old businesses because everyone tries to cut corners in areas they should not be cutting corners in. A business will assume the same person can do email marketing, social media and copywriting because they are ‘easy’ without knowing what really goes into each task. When you give one person more of a workload than they can handle, without knowing the real scope of what each responsibility entails, it makes the work and the person themselves suffer. Each of their responsibilities will suffer since they have to give energy to each aspect. Not only that, but the employee being spread too thin will become burnt out and may end up leaving your company for another that gives them the proper amount of responsibilities for time (and pay).

While there are countless other mistakes one can make when it comes to marketing, these are a few to get you started… well, not started, but avoided. That being said, mistakes happen and they will happen many times. But just because a mistake happens, you can’t let it throw you off course completely, you have to keep trying and working towards your goal.