People often don’t realize just how difficult it can be to run a business. Startups can be easy to get going, but lasting for more than a couple of months, let alone several years, is extremely challenging even if you have a solid product or offer good services. Part of the problem is that a lot of startups seem to neglect the importance of marketing–good marketing that actually converts leads into paying customers.
So in this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest marketing mistakes that you can make and how to avoid them.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/s8HyIEe7lF0 (CC0)
Forgetting to diversify the content you use to market your business
The concept of content marketing is one that even large legitimate businesses fail to understand sometimes. Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable, consistent and relevant content that attracts your audience. It could be videos explaining how to use your products, podcasts that detail your progress in the industry or blog posts talking about the industry. Diversifying your content means that you’re providing your audience with more ways to engage with your brand, and failing to do so means you’re severely limiting your audience.
Neglecting the use of social media
Social media is a vital component of any marketing strategy as it serves as the primary point of contact for your customers. Since there are billions of users across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn, it’s important to take advantage of that audience by setting up social media accounts and posting updates and news about your products. It’s also a good idea to link these social media accounts to your online presence so that they can be used to receive feedback from your audience. This is a great way to engage your audience and show that you care about your customers, but it’s also a unique way to market your brand and grow your business if used correctly.
Using marketing strategies that don’t work for your industry
It’s important to learn what marketing strategies work for different industries. That’s why there are companies that focus entirely on law firm business development while others are more geared towards marketing strategies for tech companies. There’s a huge variety of different strategies that can be applied to various businesses, so it’s essential that you do your research on the market and figure out what works best for your industry, your products and services and also your audience.
Failing to cover both creative and technical aspects of marketing
Marketing isn’t just a creative endeavour–it’s also a technical one. Creativity can help with the overall branding of your company, such as the logo design, website design, color choices and so on. However, it needs to also have a technical component that makes it practical and functional. For instance, you’ll need to design your website so that it adapts to both mobile and desktop users, and you need to consider aspects such as metadata which can make your website easier to find by search engines.
