1. Avoiding Online Marketing
Owning and running a small business requires a lot of work and money, which is why many small business owners forget about their online presence. In many cases, you simply don’t have the time or knowhow to build and manage a website or social media accounts. Of course, you could hire someone, but that isn’t always in the budget.
Unfortunately, in the modern world, you need to make sure you have a good online presence to help you compete with your competitors. Having a website gives customers a place to visit before they visit your business or contact you. This actually helps connect the right customers to your business.
Of course, having a terrible website can actually hurt your business. If it doesn’t look professional, has old information, broken links, and typos, customers won’t take you seriously.
2. Targeting the Wrong Audience
If you start marketing without a good plan, you’re going to waste a lot of money targeting the wrong audience. For example, if your audience is young women who love fashion, you aren’t going to get many customers if you market on print media or social media sites young women don’t use.
For this reason, you have to get to know your audience well. First, getting to know your audience helps you determine what they want, so you can provide it. It also allows you to determine which channels and mediums they prefer, so you can advertise on those mediums.
Once you have captured your target audience, keep them by creating engaging posts or ads, starting a communication with your audience, etc.
3. Ignoring the Data and Analytics
As your business grows, and you begin to market more and more, you may no longer realize how most of your customers are reaching you. While you may assume it’s the ads you run on Google, it may actually be that most people find you through social media.
This is why you need to ensure you track and monitor data and analytics regarding your marketing strategies. In the above example, the data will show that your social media is generating most customers. With this information, you can stop spending so much on Google ads and start spending more on social media.
Data can also be used to determine how many customers return to your website, and how many of those customers actually buy items. All the data can be used to help you better meet your customers’ needs, making them want to keep coming back.
4. Spending too Much to Acquire New Customers
Naturally, to get your business going, you need new customers, but once your business takes off, you need to focus more on customer retention because it can save you significant money. On average, marketing to get new customers can cost up to five times more than marketing to retain a customer.
In addition, when you attempt to sell to a returning customer, you have a success rate of 60 to 70 percent. With new customers, the success rate is only 5 to 20 percent. Therefore, a simple 5 percent increase in customer retention can boost your profits by up to 95 percent.
Don’t let your small business fail just because you struggle with marketing. Marketing isn’t as simple as running an ad in the newspaper anymore. You need to fully understand who your audience is and what they want. If you need some help with your marketing, we can help. Contact us at Area of Expertise today.
