Advertising Mistakes and Marketing Errors

Marketing is one of the greatest business challenges. Many people and especially new marketers fall into a number of common pitfalls when it comes to marketing and promoting their businesses. The most common mistakes are opting for marketing campaigns simply because they are free rather than weighing whether they are effective. On our apps, we consistently observe people making a number of common marketing mistakes which we will go over in this article.

Marketing mistake: not considering the 4 pillars of a successful marketing campaign

In every marketing effort you make, you must consider the four pillars of a successful marketing campaign. They are cost, user targeting, scale, and eventual conversion of the people who learn about your business into paying customers.

Marketing mistake: There is no free marketing

The true cost of any marketing effort is the sum of the actual cost to place the ads, the number of man-hours it requires to get that marketing campaign going, and the amount of time from its beginning to when it shows results. And if a marketing campaign never shows results, then the cost is also the lost customers and the business growth that didn't happen during that time.

Marketing mistake: choosing social media advertising just because it is free

Many new businesses don't have much money to advertise, so they look to social media marketing to promote their business because it is free. Social media can be a good marketing tool, but only if used correctly. The mistake many people make is simply posting updates to their social networks, which mostly doesn't help to bring in new clients, and just annoys the current social media contacts. To learn more about various social media marketing such as Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing and Marketing with GooglePlus take a look at those corresponding pages.

But at the same time, there are many things you can do with social media marketing that are low hanging fruit. For example, you can place social sharing buttons on your website. The social sharing buttons won't generate much extra traffic. Most sites can expect a 1-2% addition to the traffic depending on the virality and quality of the content. But why not take that extra traffic if the investment in it is minimal.

Marketing mistake: not thinking more holistically

With almost any marketing campaign, to really get the most out of it, you must think holistically. Here is an example. We already realize that social media marketing doesn't work if you simply post updates to your social media feeds. It will work a little bit. But it won't be enough. But thinking bigger and more holistically, we may realize that social media can mean guest blogging and blogging on your own site, it might also mean interacting with influencers in your niche, and even aiming to become an influencer and an authority in your niche. That kind of broader thinking can get you more exposure by leveraging bigger platforms, which will in turn build your social media following so that your social media updates reach more people.

Marketing mistake: not using bigger platforms

Just using your own social media following and your own website is not enough in terms of advertising. When most businesses start out, their social media followings are relatively small, and they have almost no traffic to their website. So posting marketing messages via those channels is not likely to be effective.

What you must do is think about larger blogs, sites, podcasts, social media accounts, or any other media that has a larger following, and figure out how to make them promote you. That can be by a number of online marketing strategies or offline marketing strategies. Some of those strategies are guest blogging, or building relationships with social media influencers, or any other means that depend on the opportunities within your business niche. But you have to be active and stand out in some ways so the bigger platforms take notice of your work.

Not standing out

Many businesses don't know how to stand out. If you are in a competitive environment, and almost all businesses are, then you must find a way to differentiate yourself. It is good to differentiate yourself by better quality, higher attentiveness to customers, or any other good business practice. But if you can figure out how to get attention is by differentiating your business from its competitors in a unique and exciting way, that can get you quite a bit of attention from media such as blogs and other websites.

Common mistake: misjudging costs

Just be careful not to go overboard with the differentiation, and not make your company look strange or unprofessional.

Marketing mistake: being timid or too aggressive

While it is good to be aggressive with your marketing, and try to get as much exposure as possible, there are some concerns to think about. Trying to grow too fast sounds great, and it can be. But that is not always the case. If your product quality is not where it should be, or other business fundamentals are not where they need to be, having too many customers can backfire. Ironically, you also cannot wait for your service to be perfect before you start marketing. If you wait too long, you will miss out on some growth, and some of the learning that would have happened if you had been working with clients.

Common social media marketing mistakes to avoid

Here are the Twitter marketing mistakes to avoid.

Marketing mistake: not always learning

Marketing these days is pretty complex. Google is constantly changing their algorithm for where it shows your site in search results. Social networks are constantly evolving and so is accepted behavior on them. Plus the demands of customers are always changing as well, and they continue to expect more and more quality. So you have to stay on top of marketing and keep learning new things to be better than your competition.

Further resources

A great site that focuses on social media marketing is Mashable. Here is the page from Mashable that focuses on marketing. And of course, here is the Wikipedia page on social media marketing. And if you need to set up a website so you can begin your social media marketing efforts, here is the tutorial to website setup tutorial.

Article by Alex Genadinik