For most companies, his type of marketing is out of their reach. There are however many types of marketing that can be done on a shoestring budget. There is online lead generation, email marketing lists, and newsletters, social media marketing and automated marketing services. Now that you have an overview lets cover some common marketing mistakes and how to avoid them.

1) Lack of Research: Marketing is the life-blood of a company, and the wrong marketing campaign can be a total disaster. You need to research your campaigns to see which ones are best for your situation and how they can be adapted to better serve your company’s needs. Fortunately, the internet has a wealth of great information on marketing and how you can choose the plan that fits your company. I won’t attempt to cover it all here, but there is a lot to consider like budget, resources, amount of business you need, your type of business, etc. The quickest way to get started is to find a successful business that is very similar to yours and see what kinds of marketing they are using. Don’t make the mistake of copying someone else’s marketing plan however because even in similar situations you need to customize the program to fit your personal needs.

2) They Don’t Know What They are Selling: To know how to market yourself and your products you need to know what you are selling. If you think that you are selling a simple product or service you need to think again. Customers do not want to buy a service or product they want to buy a solution to a problem. If you don’t know how your product fits into that equation, then any marketing plan will come up short. To avoid this mistake, we need to think like our customers. The best way to do this is to talk to real customers and ask them why they buy your products and in particular, what problem that the product or service solves for them.

3) Failure to Capture Repeat Business: This is a critical mistake but one we see all the time in our work. Companies come to us wanting to capture new customers which is great, but most people fail to consider that over 80% of most people business comes from repeat customers. This is typically a much more lucrative area to mine than just looking for a new customer each time you want to make a sale. Thus is because it is much harder to sell to a new customer than an existing one. Some estimate that it takes five times the effort to sell to a new prospect than to an established one. One easy way to pick up more business is to go thorough existing files and look for inactive customers to target with your marketing efforts. Repeat customers spend over 30% more than new customers and are twice as likely to refer you to someone else. So get out there and start nurturing those existing customer relationships and watch your business soar.

4) Focusing on the Wrong Customers: There’s an old saying in the marketing business; If you are marketing to everyone you are marketing to no one. This could not be truer. To maximize your marketing dollars, you need to know a few things first. The main thing is who are your ideal customer personas. It is typically helpful to make up names for them such as Mrs. Jane Smith – an executive for a fortune 500 company or Joe Brown – middle school teacher. The more you know about your ideal customer, the better off you are. Once you know your ideal customer, you can ask questions like where do they get their information on purchasing products like mine, what motivates them and where are the spending most of their time. This can help you focus your campaign so that you can focus with laser precision on the people who are most likely to buy.

5) Failure to A/B Test: This is also a critical mistake but one we see quite often. Companies come to us wanting to improve their marketing, but they have no idea what is working and what is not. Fortunately, we can provide them with A/B testing of small campaigns to see which ones will make the most significant impact on their targeted customers and then we can focus on improving only the campaigns which are currently working for them. This is one of the best ways to maximize marketing dollars and fuel growth.