Running a successful startup takes a lot of hard work. After all, your product or service may be the very best possible, but no one will buy it unless you’re willing to put the time, energy, and money into marketing it.
Marketing and advertising are what keep your business alive, and, as such, getting them right can be quite the challenge. In fact, you’ll probably make a lot of mistakes along the way. Of course, mistakes are a part of life and can be great opportunities to learn and grow, but, if possible, it’s always best to avoid them. With that in mind, here are five marketing mistakes you can’t afford to make.
Trying To Copy Competitors
It’s always a sensible idea to research your competitors and see what marketing strategies work and don’t work for them. That being said, you shouldn’t try to copy or mimic what they’re doing exactly. One of the biggest dangers of this is that they don’t really know what they’re doing, meaning that your marketing attempts will fail with theirs. There’s also the risk that customers will spot you copying and get annoyed with or bored by the repetitiveness.
Doing It All Yourself
Marketing is a huge job with a number of strategies and methods to consider. Because of this, it’s something you shouldn’t try to do alone. If you don’t want to hire a permanent marketing team just yet, you should look into outsourcing to freelancers and agencies, such as a digital marketing agency. This way, you have a lot more free time to focus on other jobs within your startup, but still, receive the high quality work you need to grow your business.
Using Your Website Ineffectively
Websites are absolutely crucial for businesses of every shape and size, but having a site for your startup isn’t enough if you’re not using it effectively. You need to ensure that it’s optimised for search engines and that it can be accessed and looked through properly using smaller devices, like smartphones and tablets. You should also consider publishing blog posts on your site, to provide the valuable content necessary to boost traffic
Neglecting Your Market Research
Marketing isn’t something where you can just choose whatever strategy you fancy and hope for the best; You need to carefully consider your customers, do plenty of research on their needs and preferences, and plan your strategies accordingly. If you fail to do this, you’ll likely target the wrong audience, which will waste time and money. That being said, you should also ensure that your methods sometimes target other audiences who may find your product or service useful.
Failing To Review Strategies
Once you’ve launched a marketing strategy, it’s vital that you review it’s status and effectiveness regularly. If you don’t do this, you’ll continue to invest time and money into a method that might not be making you any money back. Because of this, you need to evaluate your ads, review your analytics, and measure sales volume to see what’s working and what isn’t. When you know this information, you can make whatever changes you need to.
All entrepreneurs make mistakes when it comes to marketing, but, hopefully, with the advice above, you’ll make fewer in the future.