1) Not clearly understanding what you are trying to achieve.

When it comes to Marketing, businesses usually commence their concerted marketing effort based on one of the following reasons:

a) Knee-jerk reaction Marketing

This is the most common reason and it is usually as a result of a drop in sales, lack of traffic on the website or general dip in brand interest or awareness.

b) ‘Just do it’ Marketing

This is a command, usually handed down by a CEO or another department that demands a marketing campaign of some sort is actioned immediately, without too much thought into the detail or what the end goal should be, ‘just get it done’.

c) We are getting left behind Marketing

Sometimes businesses get wind that their competitors are doing a great job of marketing themselves, so much so that it spurs them into action to ensure they do not get left behind.

The trouble with starting a marketing campaign based on any of the above points, is that it tends to be rushed.

If your business rushes into a marketing campaign to try and urgently turn things around, the only driver you have at that point is usually to just get it done, or just get something going or just make sure we post something, anything, without any thought or consideration to what exactly you are trying to achieve.

We would suggest that regardless of whether there is an urgent requirement for you as a business to commence a marketing campaign, or not, the key question that should be asked is ‘what are you trying to achieve’ by injecting effort and potentially money into this marketing?

The output of this question should provide you with several key points that should act as the foundation before even contemplating starting any form of Marketing:

1. Goals – A set of Clear Goals for your Marketing Campaign.
2. Method of Marketing – Which Channels you will be using.
3. Timescale – How long will this Marketing Campaign be running?
4. Budget – How much you are willing to invest?
5. ROI – How long will it be before you see ROI and what will that be?
6. Success – What will Success look like at the end of the campaign.

2) Throwing Money at a Campaign before testing the water.

If a business has decided to commence a Marketing campaign, it is far too easy to throw a lot of money at it without testing the water first.

A good way to kick things off before starting a full blown marketing campaign is to use the power and versatility of paid media. By harnessing paid media you are able to set a small amount of budget aside to target segments of users and see how effective they take to you initial ideas.

By using either Social Media advertising or Pay Per Click you are able to specify details such as locations, age range, likes, dislikes, keywords, job roles and a raft of other criteria that will allow you to gauge the performance and success of a very strict campaign that will give you the evidence you need to know whether it is worth spending a great deal of money or throwing time and effort at it.

3) Using the wrong channels to market to the wrong audience.

Choosing the right channels to reach the correct audience is the difference between a Marketing campaign going well and one that falls flat on its face.

Make sure you use a combination of past experience, historical data and don’t be afraid to look around at where your competitors are advertising.

This will give you a good starting point to assess which media or channels you should be using to get your message and brand out there.

Whatever channels you decide are best for you as a business, make sure you carry out enough research to be sure that your perfect customer will be there when you start shouting from the roof tops.

4) Spending too much time perfecting the marketing.

Many businesses take weeks, months, years defining, planning and polishing their perfect marketing campaign. This is fine as long as it does not paralyse you into not taking action and being left well and truly behind.

There is never a ‘perfect’ time to get going with marketing, usually there is not enough money, the time is not right, not enough resource, not happy with the finished product or message, the list just goes on and on.

As long as there has been enough thought and planning gone in to the Marketing campaign with buy in from all necessary parties it’s worth running with it and learning as you go with the help of some integrated analytics and metrics.

The key factor here is to make sure that you are tracking the campaign day by day and keeping it on track by being proactive or reactive in a timely manner.

5) Failing to track what is going on or truly understand what has happened.

One of the biggest sins when businesses attempt Marketing, is not to track exactly what is going on from the very start.

This is an essential part of getting to grips with exactly what has happened, what is currently happening and what could happen. This in turn will give you enough information to define a watertight plan on how to get the campaign heading towards the goals you had laid out from the outset.

So there we have it, our 5 key mistakes most business will be making on a day to day basis with their Marketing.

If you would like to chat further about your own companies Marketing, then please contact UMIS Consultancy for a no obligation chat about your current situation so we can help you get your business noticed!