6 Common marketing mistakes & how to avoid them

An introduction to what you need to think about before you do your next bit of marketing work

Marketing isn’t an easy thing to do. That’s why advertising firms charge so much for their services. But you’re a small to medium sized business and can’t afford to hire marketing professionals, so have to go it on your own. The temptation of just slapping something together just so that you have some marketing out there is all too easy. Your job is running your business, not doing marketing. If you’re not ready to make use of a specialist SME Marketing business like us here at Copy Express to take care of the work, what can you do to avoid common mistakes to avoid wasting money and time?

To us at Copy Express, there are six basic questions you should be asking yourself before you start any marketing task.

• Who are you marketing to?
• What is it that solves their problems?
• Does it state your point of difference?
• Do you have a Call to Action?
• Are you saying too much or too little?
• Does it have a ‘put on the fridge’ hook

Who are you marketing to?

The first question you should ask yourself is who is this marketing too? All too often business owners will try to market to everyone, in the theory that the more people they reach the higher chance they will get responses. The problem is that the more people you try to reach, the overall return for the money spent falls. We have covered this in more detail here in the article Understanding market segmentation. The TL:DR takeaway is that it’s better to invest your marketing to a smaller number of potential clients who give you the best returns, than to try and market to everyone.

There is no reason why you can’t have different versions of your marketing strategy for different categories of potential clients. Use different variations of offers, different methods of marking, times of years, and so on. A well designed marketing plan will allow you to create basic frameworks of material that you can just drop in different parts to better suit who you are marketing to. For example your website can have different ‘landing pages’ which are single pages that combine all your offerings for a targeted audience in one easy to search for / google friendly place. The cost of developing such pages is fairly low but has a high return on investment over trying to make a super complex site to take care of every potential client.

What is it that solves their problem?

This is one that has to be repeated time and time again because it’s all too easy for people to forget when they try to create marketing for themselves. People will only contact a business when they need a problem to be solved and not before. Until they have that problem, marketing to them is pointless as it’s going into the trash without being looked at.

Look for a problem that is common for your preferred clients and offer a solution to it. Here is some questions to ask when picking the problem to provide a solution too:

• Is it one that can only be solved by your type of business?
• How fast does it need to be solved? 
• How frequently does it need to be solved?
• Is it a one time problem or requires a recurring solution to it.
• What price range does it fall in?
• Are you saying too much or too little?
• How long do they have to take up the deal?

By asking these questions you will be able to narrow down your marketing content to better answer their needs and have a higher chance of getting a follow up from potential customers.

Does it state your point of difference?

The simple fact is that you are in competition with other businesses in the same marketplace who will be offering largely the same services or products. You have to have something to stand out from the competition or you won’t last long. We have talked about it before in various articles, but to restate it here; the point of difference is what makes your business unique and will make potential customers talk to you first.

What if you don’t know what your point of difference is? The simplest way to find out is talking to the customers you already have and find out why they chose to do business with you. Even one off customers make for a great way of learning what makes your business appealing to others. It can also highlight if you are taking the wrong direction in your marketing (or for your business in general) if the reasons they give aren’t the ones you expect. It never hurts to ask and the more people you ask the more accurate the feedback is.

Do you have a Call to Action?

A Call to Action, the reason why they must contact you now. Without that your marketing isn’t going to have any impact with your potential customers. So what is a Call to Action? In the simplest form, it’s the solution to the problem that needs to be solved. Remember how I said customers will only come to you when they need a problem to be solved, so you need to outline the problem and give them the solution in a few seconds seeing the marketing. This ties back to my 5+10+15 Second Rule for marketing.

How do you pick your Call to Action? It could be a time or supply limited offer (popular with fast food brands), tie it into on coming events (is your roof ready for winter rains?), motivate by implying it’s costing them to not act (call us now to stop wasting money on heating bills!) The options are as varied as the products and services your business offers. One thing it is not is the ticket price, as there will always be competition that will match or beat you on price, and the goal is to increase revenue not reduce it.

Are you saying too much or too little?

This ties in to several other articles that can be found on this blog, relating to the 5+10+15 Second Rule, the medium used to do the marketing, being cost effective in your marketing choices, and more. We cover some of it in Planning Your Marketing, 2021 Edition. Here we’re going to focus on a more general overview.

Long story short, people have very little time to consume individual bits of marketing information these days, thanks to the increased volume and more means of general distraction to them. So marketing has to be punchy and attention grabbing out of the box, as it has only a few seconds to make people interested. This links back to the 5+10+15 Second Rule, and those all important first 5 seconds. The problem is that when people get past that first 30 seconds, there’s nothing else. Always make sure you have links back to your business, not just the website, but related social media too. You should even have direct links to much more detailed information related to your marketing reinforcing to the customer that they made the right decision choosing your business. This feeds on to the next question, does it have a ‘put on the fridge’ hook?

Does it have a ‘put on the fridge’ hook?

What do I mean by ‘put on the fridge’ hook? Well in some business, there is no way you can drive a customer to act on your advertising. So instead you have to build your marketing around name retention. The goal is to have your business name associated with a set of services or products. This association means that when they need those products or services your business comes to mind first. You don’t want to be at the mercy of a google search, because that could hurt as much as help your business thanks to the way that google structures its results on the page.

A classic example would be real estate agents and their marketing. No one thinks about real estate until they need to, which by that time their needs are generally very high. As such every agent and the business they represent is on a level playing field as ultimately the product (the house) is what makes the deal. So the drive of the marketing is to associate their name with real estate. One way they do it is by having material that the customer holds on to. For example, an agent in my region does a calendar fridge magnet every year. It’s a useful item which I see every day, and in the process I now picture his face and name when I think about real estate.

What your business does to get that ‘put on the fridge’ may not be as physical as that. You could have a social media feed highlighting new products or jobs you’ve completed. Have easy to reach links to a YouTube account with videos covering information about the industry you’re in so people learn about what you do. Have short articles on your website that pop up when people put questions into the search about some particular part of your industry. Doing all of this online work also helps get you ranked higher on general searches too.

In Review

Lets go over what we have learned by asking those six questions:

• Who are you marketing to? – It is better to narrow your market to insure a better chance of connecting with them and improving your response to it.
• What is it that solves their problems? – People only act when they have a problem needing to be solved so your marketing must offer both the problem and the solution to it.
• Does it state your point of difference? – You are not the only business offering the same goods or services to those potential customers. Have you told them why they should choose you over the competition?
• Do you have a Call to Action? – Does it motivate the potential customer to become a real one, what is the incentive for them to do so?
• Are you saying too much or too little? – You have a very small window of opportunity to catch their attention, but then don’t fail by offering them an easy way to find out much more.
• Does it have a ‘put on the fridge’ hook? – The odds are people you’re reaching out to will not be in the market for your business right now, so make sure you’re the one they think of when they do need those products or services.

Are these only mistakes that a small business might make in their marketing? Of course not, there are many more traps that businesses can fall into when doing marketing by themselves. To avoid them you can read the many other informative articles that can be found here on this blog. Better still contact Copy Express directly and we can step you through everything you need to make your marketing more effective.