When you rely on organic traffic for your small business marketing, there are many pitfalls. Sadly, each of these could cost you customers or clients. And when you calculate the lifetime value of each customer or client, losing one potential buyer suddenly becomes very expensive.
Here are 5 common marketing mistakes by small business owners:
1. Not targeting your marketing:
There is an old expression that says: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”
Unless you are selling something like ice cream which is literally bought by almost everyone, it simply doesn’t make sense to go after “everyone”.
In most businesses, clients or customers typically share some common problems, desires, age group, financial status, or other demographic. Usually it is a combination of a few of them.
For instance, if you sell cheap used cars, you will probably be looking at lower income earners and first time buyers.
The reality is that there is just so much advertising out there that it is difficult to cut through the proverbial noise. The only way to cut through the noise is to have a message that resonates with your prospect. And the only way to resonate with your prospect is to actually know who they are, and what matters to them.
If you don’t, your advertising or content will simply be “part of the noise” – which the human mind (literally) filters out.
2. Not streamlining your marketing:
Many small business owners and managers complain that doing content marketing is simply too time consuming. That may not be the best way to look at how you spend your marketing budget though.
The more logical way would be to look at what you have available in terms of time (your own or delegated), and/or money. Then, you need to look at how your time and/or money can be put to use in the most efficient way.
When it comes to time, look at ways in which you can speed up specific, time consuming tasks. If you have systems in place to reduce the time allocated to marketing, it may very well determine whether those tasks get done or not.
And if you still want to apply the same amount of time – let’s say it is delegated – then you will be able to get more done, and reach more people, in the same amount of time.
It just makes sense to do it.
3. Inconsistent social media engagement:
The repercussions of this mistake are two-fold – on one hand, being consistent means that people see you interacting regularly. It means you are dependable, which translates into trust. Trust translates into brand value.
On the other hand, most social media platforms consider your activity on the platform (not just the content you post) when they decide how many people to show your content to.
If you are inconsistent, it will hurt your visibility.
A prime example is Pinterest – where, once you have spent ten to fifteen minutes per day on the platform for around 3 week, even just pinning other people’s (relevant) stuff to your own boards, you will notice your view counts climbing in your (Pinterest business account) analytics.
Most social networks do this to some extent – and being active regularly can put your exposure on a whole new trajectory.
4. Not looking at your analytics or insights:
Would you be able to drive a car without any instrumentation? Would you be able to just get in and go, not knowing how fast you were going, whether you have enough fuel, whether the car is overheating in heavy traffic…
Of course not.
Looking at your analytics or insights (depending on which social network you are on), as well as your Google Analytics and Google Search Console is crucial for you to know what works, and what doesn’t.
In the case of social networks, you can see how many people you have reached, and how many interacted with your content. This not only shows you what works and what doesn’t, but it also tells you if any experiment with new content types or content variations are worth pursuing or not.
In the case of Google Analytics and Google’s Search Console, you can see which pages are getting views – and not – and try to improve those pages, plus you can see which keyword phrases people are able to find you with on Google searches.
Knowing which keyword phrases you are getting traffic for – and not – will tell you which ones to double down on, and which ones need some more work.
5. Not optimizing for local SEO:
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many people get it wrong. They will just assume that people will know who they are, and only state their address on their contact page.
However, Google looks at the text content of your home page. If it doesn’t clearly state which town/city/county/area you operate in, Google will probably not rank your website very well for searches which include local search terms.
In addition to that, it is another no-brainer to list your business on Google my Business (Google’s business listings) – because those results are displayed even before the first website result is shown.
And much like your website, you can spend a little time on that – and rise to the top of the business listings results. Unlike your website, backlinks to your Google business listings do not contribute to your ranking – it is judged solely on the content of your listing.
So if it is done properly, it is possible to outrank your competitors – even if your business is smaller than theirs.
In conclusion:
Marketing is expensive. It doesn’t matter whether you simply pay for advertising, or whether you delegate the marketing activities to someone else. It can be even more expensive if you have to do it yourself, because it can keep you from working on your core business activities.
Make every penny – and every minute – count for as much as it possibly can.