While small business is simple, it is most certainly not easy. Every day brings its own set of challenges and hurdles. What seems to work one day can suddenly stop working the next.
One thing’s for sure, though, with today’s world already being massively oversaturated with marketing clutter, your marketing better be great to stand a chance of helping you.
Often, it makes sense to look at what not to do to determine what to do in business. So that’s the approach we’ll take in this article series, where we will identify several marketing recipes for failure… ones that have proven to be so detrimental to so many well-meaning small businesses.
So without further adieu, here is what I believe are the three most common and most significant small business marketing recipes for failure:
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Marketing Recipes for Failure #1: Casual Marketing
Let’s start by defining what ‘casual marketing’ is precisely.
In a nutshell, it’s trying a marketing tactic once, maybe twice. Then, when you don’t see immediate or expected results, you drop that marketing tactic and either try something else or, worse yet, don’t do any marketing for a while – hoping clients will magically appear.
This is the old ‘build it, and they will come’ disorder.
I don’t know if you’re one of the charmed ones, but sitting and waiting for clients to show up has never worked for me or anyone I know of.
Marketing Recipes For Failure #2: Spray & Pray Marketing
Essentially it means spraying your marketing message out to anyone and everyone and hoping that the right someone will immediately come knocking at your door. In the online world of the Internet, we call this technique spamming, and it’s illegal in that world.
So why do so many small businesses use this approach in the offline world?
This untargeted and, in my opinion, inappropriate marketing is a huge time and money drain that needs to be plugged up immediately if a small business is to succeed.
Marketing Recipes For Failure #3: Flavor-of-the-day Marketing
Did you ever hear of the phrase ‘wing it’?
How about the old cliché ‘flying by the seat of your pants’?
There’s a time and a place for unplanned, spur-of-the-moment action. However, it should not be the primary approach to your marketing. Lack of a solid marketing plan and/or the lack of discipline to follow it are typically the driving forces behind this problem.
So let’s be honest now, are you guilty of using these ‘marketing recipes for failure‘?
I admit it; I had been guilty in the past and have learned some hard lessons because of it.
If you are guilty, first off, go easy on yourself. The past is the past; it’s over and done with.
It’s what you do with your marketing from this moment forward that will ultimately determine the success of your business. Always remember… great marketing paves the way for an easier sale!
Great marketing paves the way for an easier sale.
