All too often, business owners base their decisions on opinions and intuition. That’s okay to a point, but succeeding in today’s marketplace requires you to have a keen understanding of your business objectives and know when to resist marketing fads. Take a look at the top marketing mistakes for business owners, plus a few steps to help you avoid these pitfalls.
What Are the Top Marketing Mistakes for Business Owners?
Marketing mistakes share a common thread: they’re the result of business owners making uneducated decisions about marketing platforms. In the end, it does more harm than good for their bottom lines. So you’ll want to avoid the top mistakes for business owners, like the five I’ll discuss below.
1) Executives Make Decisions Based on What They Think is True
“There is nothing wrong with intuition and ‘common sense’ and these are naturally part of decision making in business. However, where the decisions require large financial resources and where the costs of failure are high, there is a need for decision making based on robust and reliable data.”
– Paul Hague, Julia Cupman, Matthew Harrison, and Oliver Truman, KoganPage
Can you imagine packing your clothes for an overseas trip according to what you think the weather might be like? Probably not. You’d probably research it, or at least check the weather forecast.
Unfortunately, many executives operate like this in business. They make critical marketing decisions based on what they think is true. Rather than considering the facts or verified data, business owners use their intuition, subjective opinions or random ideas as a basis for marketing initiatives.
2) Business Owners Don’t Share Information with Marketing Teams
Holding information hostage doesn’t benefit your marketing strategy. However, many business owners don’t share information about revenue or business objectives with their marketing teams or partners. It creates a cloudy work atmosphere, where picking marketing initiatives is like throwing darts in the dark.
3) Executives Make Decisions Based on Marketing Fads
“Fads are here today, gone tomorrow happenings. They are sudden changes in consumer markets or tastes that happen momentarily but don’t create a lasting change on consumers or their habits…Fads emerge quickly, suck up a lot of attention and consumer demand for a short time, and then die off just as quickly.”
– Jeffrey Phillips, Senior Consultant, RTI Innovation Advisors
It’s so frustrating to be in a meeting with an executive who’s pushing for a marketing fad he read about online. Some fads are ultimately harmless, but others have undermined companies, like keyword stuffing and purchasing contact lists.
4) “We’ve Always Done it This Way”
Just because you’ve used the same marketing approach for five years doesn’t mean it’s the best strategy moving forward. Unless you can show that an initiative is increasing conversions or helping you achieve business objectives, it might be time to reevaluate your marketing strategies.
5) Decision Makers Don’t Understand Marketing Principles
“Keep your overall goal in mind when you’re developing campaign strategies. If you lose sight of this, your efforts could be wasted and even damage your brand in the long run.”
– Jeff Previte, Marketing Specialist and Writer
Stakeholders, executives and other decision makers should have a working knowledge of basic marketing principles. The problem? That’s usually wishful thinking. They often make decisions without considering shared goals, target audience characteristics or product parameters.
Steps to Avoid Marketing Pitfalls
To avoid the top marketing mistakes for business owners, leaders have to base decisions on facts and data instead of gut feelings. More importantly, marketing strategies need to be monitored, and should always reflect your business goals. Follow five steps to avoid marketing mistakes and position your business for future success.
1.) Clearly Outline Business Objectives
“An “objective” is something you’re trying to achieve — a marker of the success of the organization. At the other end of the spectrum is “action.” This occurs at the individual level — a level that managers are presented with day after day…”Strategy” takes place between these two at the organization level and managers can’t “feel” that in the same way. It’s abstract.”
– Graham Kenny, Harvard Business Review
Knowing your business objectives is the most important step in developing a marketing plan. Without a clear understanding of what your business wants to achieve, you and marketing plan will probably fail. Define your business objectives by asking yourself key questions:
- What would I like my business to accomplish over the next 12 months?
- Who is my target audience? What types of prospects do I hope to attract?
- How will my business help customers, employees and investors?
- What is my marketing budget? How much can I afford to dedicate to marketing?
2.) Use Your Marketing Plan in All Aspects of Your Business
“Marketing works best when fully integrated into all aspects of business strategy and function…CEOs can support the business (and not just the marketing team!) by making sure that marketers are involved from the strategy phase forward, assessing the market and customer needs from day one.
– Anne Ashbey, MDsave, Inc.
The best way to ensure your marketing plan is well received is to secure stakeholder and executive team support. This means decision makers need to understand marketing goals and their corresponding strategies. Essentially, you want to create a marketing-infused work culture where employees share a similar vision.
3.) Track Results
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
– John Wanamaker
Exceeding your sales and revenue goals is a wonderful feeling. But if you’re not sure which marketing strategies drove your success, you can only guess which tactics produced results. That’s the problem with making decisions based on what you think is true.
Tracking results is generally easier for strategies like pay-per-click campaigns, SEO programs and e-mail marketing campaigns, because they yield measurable results. On the other hand, monitoring inbound campaign results is trickier, but still possible with the help of a seasoned marketing analyst.
4.) Align Sales and Marketing Goals
“…There is no question that, when Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement on important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower.”
– Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Suj Krishnaswamy, Harvard Business Review
Aligning sales and marketing goals can lead to stellar results and a healthier bottom line. For instance, you can shorten the sales cycle and bolster lead generation. The AMA suggests best practices to align your sales and marketing goals:
- Get C-suite input when developing lead generation tactics
- Hold marketing directors accountable for revenue generation
- Give marketing managers a copy of your sales goals and forecast
- Schedule monthly meetings between sales management and marketing management
- Develop case studies and testimonials to move customers through the sales funnel
5.) Regularly Review Your Marketing Plan
“You need to make someone responsible for monitoring progress and chasing up overdue activities. Reviewing progress will also help you learn from your mistakes so that you can improve your plans for the future.”
– Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal
Never assume you can relax once you’ve completed your marketing plan. Instead, periodically review and update your marketing plan to avoid limiting your results. Recognizing that your work has just begun will help your company’s long-term success.
A few tips to continually improve your marketing plan:
- Review your marketing plan and business objectives at least twice a year.
- Eliminate marketing strategies that don’t help your bottom line.
- Share marketing results with management team members.
- Involve stakeholders and decision makers when you revise your business plan.
Trust the Pros to Help You Avoid Marketing Mishaps
Of all the top marketing mistakes for business owners, the biggest one is failing to base decisions on facts, data and sound marketing principles. Fortunately, you can get back on track by getting organized, leaning on your marketing plan and by linking marketing decisions to business objectives.
A seasoned marketing specialist can give you tools and support to ensure you’re making marketing decisions based on facts and reality. With an industry expert by your side, you can develop a marketing plan to take your organization to the next level. Need a recommendation? Get in touch with my team at RedShift to get kick your marketing game up a notch.