Wondering about the common Marketing Mistakes SMEs Make?

Currently, it is very important to have a digital marketing strategy for your small or medium-scale business. Coupled with the fact that almost everything is “going digital” nowadays, it is not only okay for you to have a strategy, you must have one that’s proven to work.

The digital space is often misunderstood to be “unpredictable”. Meanwhile, it is predictable. It is predictable because there are principles to making it work. So if you apply these principles, it will work for you. You need to understand that the digital space is not your conventional traditional media, it operates differently. And knowing the benefits of the digital space to your business, you want to harness the potential available in this space.

One major mistake most business owners make in their digital marketing is to undermine the amount of effort that is needed to make a significant impact in the online space. Most times, they think it’s about setting up a website, creating social media handles, and all that, and all of a sudden the credits start rolling in. No. It doesn’t work that way, my bad. You have your part to play. You have the work side of it. And if you don’t do what you need to do, you won’t get the results you desire.

In this article, I’ll be churning out the 5 commonly made mistakes that small and medium-scale business owners usually make as far as the digital space is concerned. You might be guilty of a couple of them too, so read through till the end.

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1. Communicating With The Wrong Audience
Imagine trying to sell designer clothes to a monk. It’ll be hard. Why? Because the monk isn’t cut out for that. That’s how speaking to the wrong audience is. No matter how hard you try, if they are not your ideal buyers (audience) the sales process will be hard. You may even get zero sales after all your efforts. How do you solve this?

Go back to the drawing board. Go and build an ideal customer/client/buyer/audience avatar. By doing this, you get to understand your buyers more accurately and this helps both your marketing activities and marketing messages to get to them more effectively. And in the long long run, it makes sales easier and better.

2. Chasing Audience Rather Than Attract

It feels different when clients come to you seeking and begging to patronize you. It’s a different ball game when they’re longing to pay for your product and services. That’s the exact feeling you want to have. It feels good. But most small business owners won’t get this feeling because they keep chasing prospects instead of attracting them.

Outbound marketing is great, it yields results, but inbound marketing isn’t a bad strategy either. The more you chase clients, the more you make them feel awkward about you. They may think you’re not considering them but rather selfish about making sales. You may end up sounding desperate to them, and they don’t like that. So how do you solve this?

Incorporate Inbound marketing strategies in your sales and marketing strategy. Content creation. Content strategy. Content marketing. Lead generation. Search Engine Optimization. Social media marketing. Branding. These are a few things you need to get your hands on as far as inbound marketing is concerned. When you’re able to attract clients, the sales process is even more pleasurable.

3. Ignoring Feedback
Feedbacks are one of the greatest marketing assets you can ever have. I mean, come to think of it, why you’re still in business in the first is because you have people who are still patronizing you more than they are patronizing your competitors. If at any point they shift attention from you to your competitors, it’ll only be a matter of time before you’re out of business.

So, if these people (your customers) are that important, why not listen to the feedback they give you and try to incorporate them? They are telling how best to serve them. How best to retain them as your customers. How best to sell to them. They are helping you to get the most out of them. Why ignore that? Ignoring feedback is one great way to run out of business over time. If you want to scale your marketing in the digital space, give room for feedback, and most importantly, consider incorporating the feedback given.

4. No Budget
You know the common saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. One good way to plan failure in the digital space to marketing is not having a marketing budget. You need to manage your marketing budget effectively if not you will have zero results after spending so much. You literally will be throwing cash in the trash. By learning to manage, and control marketing budgets, you will be able to achieve more with little, and over time, scale up.

5. Trackless Results
If you don’t track your results, you will not know what to improve upon and what to stop. This is especially true if you’re running an ad campaign.

You do not have to check the analytics if the ad is working as planned or not. If it’s not, you change and tweak and observe. If it is, you maintain or add more cash to improve. If you test everything and it’s not working you halt. That’s it. But you can’t make these decisions without tracking and observation.

Conclusion
As a small business, marketing your business online can sometimes be stressful and intimidating as well, but if you avoid these mistakes mentioned above, be sure your efforts would be more productive.