The goal of every small business owner is to attract (and retain) customers while building a profitable company. And one of the ways you can make this happen is through a great marketing plan.
But what happens when marketing goes wrong? A marketing misstep can not only cause you to lose current customers and profit, but also get a bad reputation online – which can often be hard to fix.
Check out three common marketing mistakes below:
Too Much Jargon
We all have our own industry-specific words that we use at the office – but that doesn’t mean you should put them into your marketing message. Your customers don’t want to read jargon; they want to read a message they can relate to and understand.
Geoffrey James of Inc.com agrees: “In my experience, 95% of the marketing and sales messages from small to medium companies suffer from the kind of rampant buzzwordery that’s common inside enterprise-level corporate bureaucracies. It’s almost as if entrepreneurs think that they won’t be taken seriously if they don’t use all right clichés. Ironically, the opposite is true. Nothing makes a message break through the noise better than plain and simple language – if only because it’s rare.”
Ignoring Customers on Social Media
Ignoring customers on social media is something many small business owners have been guilty of at some point. It’s easy to set up your social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, but with work and other obligations, it can be hard to find the time to monitor them. However, once you start getting people using your social media account as a medium for customer service, a timely response is crucial.
TheSojo.net notes, “Every social media post by a customer deserves a reply, even if it’s a simple thank you. It can be stressful to see a customer post a negative comment on social media. Resist the urge to delete it and reply publicly, so all of your customers will see that you’re dedicated to excellent customer service.”
Here’s another great tip from TheSojo.net, “Search your @username regularly on all social media. Don’t forget to also search for product and brand names, as not every consumer talking about your brand online is talking to you. Social Mention is a free tool for monitoring mentions of your brand on social media, and Hootsuite lets you monitor all of your accounts in one place.”
Skipping Analytics
Analytics are a great way to learn about your target audience. Did your readers like that blog you posted? What was your most popular tweet in the past week? How much traffic is your website getting? You can learn all of these things and more by monitoring analytics.
TheSojo.net suggests, “Use Google Analytics, Facebook insights, and other analytics applications to look for visitors who stay on your site the longest. Create a profile for that customer using what they looked at, where they came from, and any interaction you’ve had with them online. Once you find what works keep up your analytics monitoring so you can see if anything changes.” Doing this will help you learn what marketing tactics work the best for your target audience and will help you grow.
Tell us: Have you made any of the above marketing mistakes?
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About Shannon Willoby
Aw, this was a really nice post. In thought I would like to put in writing like this additionally – taking time and actual effort to make a very good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and by no means seem to get one thing done.
I write in the English language. If I don’t know how to spell a word I use the online dictionary. I try to stay away from cliches and slang words. I type what I want to say even if it takes me a long time. I’ve read others peoples blogs and I’ve seen some slang words or phrase’s. It’s okay to use them if your target audience likes that, some people think it sounds hip but like I said, it depends on the audience your trying to attract.