10 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Get out of the marketing traps that small teams often fall into.
“I’ve taken my company’s marketing as far as I can on my own.”
“My team is trying a lot of different things, marketing-wise, but we’re not getting traction.”
These are just a couple of challenges I have heard from the CEOs of small businesses and startups whose marketing teams are small or non-existent. In working with such companies, I have come to recognize the primary marketing challenges that under-resourced teams face.
In this article, I’ll highlight 10 classic marketing mistakes and how to address them:
There’s no marketing strategy
There’s no unique value proposition
There’s no customer research
There’s no audience segmentation
There’s no competitive monitoring
There’s no keeping up with marketing trends
There’s a patchwork of marketing systems
There’s no performance tracking
There’s misalignment with the marketing team
There’s too much investment in logo, brand, and marketing collateral
1. There’s no marketing strategy.
Telltale Sign: Posting on social media ad-hoc (“Oh, this would be great for social media!”) without considering the broader strategy.
Many companies don’t have a marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy can be as simple as one page indicating three key points:
The target audiences,
The products you sell and their benefits to each audience, and
How you’re going to reach your audiences.
Bonus: Add in key messaging pillars or talking points about the company, the products, or the audiences.
With your team aligned on this document, anyone working on marketing can work with the strategy as a reference. For example, they can select channels (eg, Instagram or email), build a marketing calendar, and create content by referencing the goals outlined in the strategy document.
2. There’s no unique value proposition.
Telltale Sign: Company team members have a hard time briefly articulating what the company does and why customers choose them.
Without a unique value proposition, a company’s marketing efforts are doomed to fail. It is critical to be able to articulate why someone should be your customer and not your competitors’.
Enter the value proposition. In 1-3 sentences, this statement explains who you service, what you offer, and why customers choose you. Focus on the value and benefits customers gain from working with you. These few sentences will be the core of your messaging efforts for both marketing and sales.
Some questions to determine your unique value proposition include:
Is your product / service different than that of your competitors’? If so, how?
Is there something distinctive about your customer service or other business element that distinguishes you?
What is your motivation to run this business?
Learn more about writing a good value proposition.
3. There’s no customer research.
Telltale Sign: Team members “know” what customers want without having ever conducted formal interviews or collected feedback from them.
I come across many business leaders who claim, “I know what my customers want.” Some of them speak with customers regularly; others don’t.
Understanding customer wants, needs, and points of friction helps improve your core offering. It also generates important marketing insights including:
What benefits do customers latch onto most?
What pain points do the products or services most help with?
What words do customers use?
And most importantly, why don’t some prospects buy from your company?
All of this is key information that can be turned into marketing materials. Using customers’ own language to write messaging means that it will sound familiar to them–it will not be company jargon.
Checking in with customers can be done on an ad-hoc basis (listening in on customer or sales calls) or more formally (through interviews, focus groups, or surveys). Getting feedback regularly, no matter the mode, is critical for keeping your finger on the pulse of what customers want.
4. There’s no audience segmentation.
Telltale Sign: Sending the same email blast to everyone on the list–current customers, prospects, and friends and family.
Using the same message for all of your audiences may be less work up-front, but it will not be effective. Creating clear audience segments is hugely helpful when developing a marketing and content strategy. It allows your team to write messages that appeal specifically to those people, increasing the chance that they will engage with your company.
These audience segments could be based off of a variety of factors:
Their demonstrated interested in different product or service lines that your company offers;
Their stage in the marketing and / or sales funnel;
Their geographic location;
Specific demographics.
Segmented messaging can easily be applied to email marketing but is also essential for ad campaigns. On organic social media, your team can create a rotating set of posts that speak to different audiences.
5. There’s no competitive monitoring.
Telltale Sign: Assuming that nobody else does what the business do.
Let’s be real. Everyone has competitors, whether they are direct competitors (offer an identical or similar service) or substitute competitors (offer something different that the customer would be just as happy with).
Many small teams neglect to monitor their competition. This is a mistake because your competition’s offerings, positioning, and marketing is a rich source of inspiration for your own business. Your analysis will help you decide whether to emulate or depart from your competitors.
A competitive analysis can help with:
Defining your unique value proposition (see point 2)
Identifying high-performing marketing channels
Defining a brand look and voice that sets you apart
Keep in mind that your competition’s marketing strategy may evolve, so it’s important to monitor them regularly.
Learn more about competitive analysis and how to draw inspiration from competitors.
6. There’s no keeping up with marketing trends.
Telltale Sign: Writing off a hot new social media platform without understanding its user base and functionality.
It can be easy to focus on tried-and-true marketing methods. But keeping up with marketing trends can pay dividends: it can provide a first-mover advantage, help a piece of content go viral, offer a new way to speak to target audiences, and more. Importantly, it will make you look like you’re in touch!
That’s not to say that you should engage with every marketing trend. With each one, it’s important to evaluate it to see if it’s a good way to reach your target audiences and market your product or services.
New trends—especially on social media—come and go quickly. Subscribing to a couple of marketing newsletters (such as Hubspot or Neil Patel) can deliver quick insights to your inbox.
7. There’s a patchwork of marketing systems.
Telltale Sign: Managing marketing across 10+ tools that don’t speak to each other.
A lot of small teams use a patchwork of marketing systems because they’re free or very cheap. In early stages, that’s understandable. But at a certain point, it’s imperative to switch to a more unified system.
Patchwork systems are challenging because it is easy for leads to fall through the cracks and it is hard to get a sense of marketing performance overall. To be effective, the patchwork systems need to communicate with each other automatically.
Streamlining marketing tools (such as investing in a unified CRM and email marketing system) is more expensive but doing so creates a tighter grasp on your sales and marketing efforts. Startups who are past very early stages should do this as soon as possible, as should small businesses that want to bring their marketing to the next level.
8. There’s no performance tracking.
Telltale Sign: Running multiple marketing initiatives without establishing success metrics.
Many companies are quick to pivot to new marketing strategies. The previous approach wasn’t working, they say. But often, they didn’t establish benchmarks and key performance metrics (KPIs) for their previous initiatives.
When marketing initiatives don’t deliver expected results, the first thing to do is to find out why. What data is available to assess the initiative’s impact? (What should have been measured from day 1 that perhaps wasn’t?) This analysis can generate insights about whether the initiative was a total miss or whether there was room for improvement on it.
There’s another challenge, too, when not tracking performance: not all leads are equal. Some customers are a much better fit for your business than others. Identifying how those “good” customers come in is a powerful way to double down on that strategy and grow your business. Without that analysis, your business might continue to pursue marketing initiatives that bring in “less desirable” customers.
9. There’s misalignment with the marketing team.
Telltale Sign: Having rigid marketing guidelines despite team feedback.
As with any teams within your business, it is important to know their strengths and their weaknesses.
A common mistake I see is unrealistic expectations of a small marketing team. Pitfalls include asking an inexperienced marketer to execute campaigns beyond their grasp without training or support, asking an under-resourced team to execute beyond their bandwidth, and asking marketing to stick to stiff, dated brand guidelines on a more informal platform.
Understanding the team’s capabilities will allow you to make the most of their time. It will also allow you to give them the autonomy to shine in their areas of expertise–which will only help your business grow.
Moreover, you’ll also have good insight about when to outsource. Agencies and marketing freelancers abound–and you’ll be able to bring them in to supplement your team at the most-needed moments.
10. There’s too much investment in logo, brand, and marketing collateral.
Telltale Sign: Thinking that paying for a beautiful logo is important to start the business.
A logo, visual brand, and messaging are important parts of a business. The most effective ones are based on customer research and a deep understanding of the business’s positioning.
When first getting off the ground, many startups are still trying to understand their customer and to determine product-market fit. Paying an expensive agency to design brand assets isn’t necessary at that point. There are plenty of free logo generators and color palette generators that can help you produce a temporary brand. This should tide you over until you have enough information—and a strong enough business—to invest in a professionally designed brand.
In a similar vein, printing marketing brochures, signs, and business cards usually isn’t necessary unless you’re attending a specific event. These expensive pieces of collateral usually get stored in a closet, never to be touched.
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Marketing mistakes are never fatal, but they may waste you a lot of time and energy. Many firms find that sidestepping these mistakes and investing in effective marketing improves other aspects of their business, too. A well-supported, seasoned marketer can shed light on client feedback that will enhance your product. Unified marketing platforms drive sales. Knowing your competition, your audiences, and marketing trends help your business stay ahead of the curve.
When in doubt, outsourcing is always an option. Schedule a free consultation with me to chat about whether outsourced marketing is for you.
Here are two ways I can help you:
Serve as your business’s Fractional CMO.
Analyze and optimize your marketing strategy.
Interested? Send me a note.