Three Mistakes That Waste Small Business Marketing Resources
Are you wasting your precious small business marketing resources and robbing your business of it’s ideal chance for survival and prosperity? Are you guilty of the following small business marketing mistakes?
1. Not investing in small business marketing research.
2. Not identifying the people most inclined to buy your products or services.
3. Failing to create and follow a small business marketing plan.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 1: Not Utilizing Small Business Marketing Research.
Some small business owners think they can’t afford to research their target market, competition and product development. But if you desire to be successful, you can’t afford not to.
Failing to gather the information that this research provides, forces you to base marketing on inaccurate or incomplete data and increases the odds that you’ll waste your marketing efforts.
Without this research, you’ll be more inclined to build a marketing program that lacks focus. Research provides the groundwork to build a strategic marketing plan, to assure that every marketing tactic contributes to your marketing and business goals, and to attract your best potential customers.
Even though small business marketing research is a cost that many small business owners are reluctant to pay, it’s a smart investment that saves wasting resources on marketing to the wrong people. That leads to the second mistake.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 2: Not Identifying The People Most Inclined To Purchase 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.
If you think everybody will want to buy your products or services, you’re just plain wrong, and you’re wasting marketing resources. If you instead take time to identify the people who really need and want what you sell, your marketing efforts will be far more effective.
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:
identify your target market,
gather vital information about this target market, and
design small business marketing campaigns to reach potential customers at least seven times within a year.
Target market research provides small business owners with information about:
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.
By knowing and basing marketing decisions on target market research, you’ll get more return on your marketing investments by eliminating much waste.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 3: Failing To Create And Follow A Small Business Marketing Plan.
The third mistake grows out of the lack of small business marketing research. When small business owners don’t do the research necessary to thoroughly understand what and how marketing strategies should be implemented, they lack focus and easily fall prey to sales people.
If you think that the only reason to have a marketing plan is because lenders want to see one in your business plan, then you are missing a valuable guide for your business and 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.
You don’t want to buy advertisements that don’t reach your target market just because media sales people are pushing their latest “greatest” promotions.
Likewise, without a marketing plan, you may be persuaded to purchase marketing services and products that aren’t right for your target market. Every penny that you spend on effective marketing is a penny that you no longer have to spend on effective marketing.
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