5 Common Small Business Marketing Troubles

Do you find Marketing to be a well of conflicting opinions? Believe it or not, you are not alone out there. Most businesses, no matter what they sell or provide, encounter very similar marketing challenges. And there are also recommended actions that can really set you in the right direction by making the modifications that you need to your line of business.

1.      Are you visible?

Everyone in the marketplace is there to make the most out of it. It is not easy to stand out in the huge crowd. You might go around advertising and promoting your business, but you will never achieve the true value for your investments until you attain a competitive edge. You need to stand out from the masses.

Many small business owners believe that there is nothing that can make them different from the rest. However, every business, no matter how small, can find a unique selling proposition, commonly known as a USP.  Your USP can be one or several factors that make you different from the crowd; anything that you have and your competition doesn’t. Every businessperson should continually work to find new or maintain their current USP if they want to avoid being part of the hordes that compete only on the basis of price.

2.      Is your advertising really working?

Ask small business owners about advertising and a very familiar issue pops up; we hardly get the response we expect from our advertising campaigns. One very likely reason for failed advertisements is that most businesspeople create and publish ads that they find appealing. But you are not your own target market, and the truth is that there can be large differences between what you like and what your customers find appealing.

Effective advertising and promotion starts with proper research. You need to understand the market you are catering to- Who they are? What issues they face? What motivates them to buy from you? Proper knowledge of the target market and their needs and wants will add flavor to your advertising and make it far more effective.

Let’s look at another scenario. We get our ad published in a local newspaper, and right after, our sales graph starts to rise. We decide that our ad is perfect and get it republished. However, this time around, our sales graph doesn’t respond like it did previously and we are clueless as to why. The reality is that the sales may have gone up the first time around due to external factors and not the ad.

In order to avoid such problems, you need to define what a good return is before you start your advertising campaign. Then you must track and measure the results of your advertising. This will let you know whether your campaign is actually working. Imagine spending over $1,000 on advertising, and in return, your sales revenue rises by only $300. Although it might take a little while and effort to measure and track campaigns, rest assured, it is worth the effort.

3.      Do you have a plan?

The most common and also the best reason for not having a solid marketing plan is, “I do not have the time.”  For most small businesses, it would be best to start off with a simple marketing plan, even if it is only a page long. Marketing plans help clearly define the pathways towards who your target customers are and how to reach them best.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. The time you spend planning never goes to waste. Instead, it helps you save the time that you waste by doing tasks that do nothing in helping you achieve your goal.

4.      Are people talking about you?

Wouldn’t it be great to have everyone talking about your business, your services, and your products? It is just like getting a huge number of people to do the marketing for you. This is what is you can achieve with word of mouth marketing. The problem is we usually expect word of mouth to start off by itself and work for us. However, in actuality, proper word of mouth needs lots of efforts to initiate and spread to get more people talking.

If you want the people to talk about you, provide them with reasons to do so. Word of mouth is usually triggered when you exceed customer expectations, i.e. they receive something far beyond what they expected. The more you exceed the expectations, the better it is for word of mouth.

Many people expect to generate word of mouth using excellent customer service. However, customer service, since it is based on several individuals, can be sporadic. It is a good idea to use customer service to generate word of mouth but to rely solely on customer service can be risky. The customer who receives excellent service today cannot be sure that their friends will receive the same service tomorrow. Deep down, customers know that service comes from an individual and not the organization, and even the best people have bad days.

5.      Are you expecting immediate results?

Some marketing tactics respond early, others take time to bring results. In order to cut down on expenses, small businesses usually use tactics that are usually long term. Most businesses employ these tactics without realizing that they are long term and tend to give up in the middle.

Abandoning a strategy midway results in considerable waste of resources already invested.

For example, due to its cost and popularity, many small business owners resort to social media for advertising. When they don’t get the results they expect early on, they give up and start to look for other media. The same thing happens with small blogs. The truth is, it takes time to build an audience and gain credibility. The tools are great, but they just don’t work overnight.