Three Mistakes That Waste Small Business Marketing Resources
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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. Failing to conduct small business marketing research.
2. Failing to target your best potential customers.
3. Failing to create a small business marketing plan to guide your business.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 1: Not Investing In 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.
Without the information acquired from research, small business marketing is built on incomplete and inaccurate information. This dooms marketing efforts from the beginning.
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.
A little money spent on research upfront can assure that your marketing to the right people and in the right way to be most successful. In fact, your target market is so important that it is covered as the second of the three major ways that small business owners waste their marketing resources.
Small Business Marketing Mistake 2: Not Targeting The People Most Likely To Become Customers
Business owners who don’t do research often don’t know the best target market for their products and services. Because they don’t determine who is most likely to buy their products, they market to everybody, and often don’t sell much to anybody. This type of small business marketing wastes marketing resources.
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
assure that your marketing plan includes at least seven tactics to reach your target market annually.
Target market research will help you to better understand:
the people most likely to buy,
the best media to reach your target market members,
their information needs and effective appeals to include in marketing messages,
their spending power and the best price-point for your product or service.
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 A Small Business Marketing Plan To Guide Your Business.
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.
Don’t waste your small business marketing resources just because a sales person has a “great” promotion on media advertisements. If the advertisements don’t reach your target market, the promotion is not great for your business.
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.
