WikiMag

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. 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 Investing In Small Business Marketing Research

You may be wasting your small business marketing resources if you are not researching your product, competition and market. The few resources that you’ll save by not doing this research, will cost you much more in wasted marketing and lost sales.

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 will waste your marketing efforts.

If you fail to do this research, your marketing plan will lack focus because you won’t have a clear marketing goal, won’t know how to select the best marketing objectives to reach that goal, and won’t know the best appeals for your target market.

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.

Many small business owners believe that everybody will want to buy what they sell, but that is seldom the case. This mistake wastes resources marketing to people who will never buy. Not only that, but failing to target the people most likely to buy, may actually alienate those who would otherwise become loyal customers.

Spending a small amount of resources on target market research can save small business owners much more in wasted marketing efforts and expenses than the research costs.

Plus, target market research helps small business owners to:

determine best potential customers,

gather vital information about this target market, and

plan at least seven marketing efforts that you will deliver each year to your target market.

By conducting target market research, you’ll discover much about:

the people most likely to buy,

the media to use to distribute your marketing messages,

their information needs and effective appeals to include in marketing messages,

their spending power and the best price-point for your product or service.

Including this information in a small business marketing plan, will greatly improve return on marketing investments.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 3: Failing To Create And Follow A Small Business Marketing Plan.

The third mistake is a result of the first two mistakes. Until you have done research on your product, competition and target market, you can’t plan the best way to spend your small business marketing resources. When you haven’t planned how to best spend your marketing resources, you can be persuaded to spend ineffectively.

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.

If you haven’t decided what marketing tactics and strategies are needed to reach your marketing goals, you are more likely to be persuaded by sales people to pursue tactics that are less effective and often just waste your marketing resources.

You need to have your marketing goals in place and make every marketing decision based on your goals. Otherwise you may fall victim to sales people who are more concerned with their sales goals than your 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.

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.

Tags: Small Business