Cumulatively, companies spend years of brainstorming, hours of overtime in the office, and exercise plenty of persistence to get products or services from the idea stage to the consumer. They then spend a significant percentage of their revenue toward advertising those products.
With so much at stake, it’s crucial to understand the value of marketing and guidelines that’ll help you successfully raise product awareness and convert sales.
So, let’s start with what not to do when it’s time to carry out your campaigns. Here are 10 mistakes to avoid when marketing your products or services.
1. Failing to Define Your Goals
It’s difficult to chart your course when you fail to set your vision. Companies often get so excited about delivering a finished product that they overlook the importance of original marketing goals or lose sight of them along the way.
The marketing goals you set change based on the stage you’re at with the product, but it’s important to clearly define key objectives for each stage of the process. Examples of solid marketing goals may look like:
- Increasing traffic to your website
- Boosting engagement with your product or brand pages online
- Building your following on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or other social media platforms
- Improving your conversion rates
- Improving the quality of new customer leads
Outline these goals with your marketing team and establish realistic, measurable objectives to hit throughout the process. Set timelines for them, along with actionable steps that will help you achieve these goals.
2. Forgetting to Study Your Consumer
Your customers are the most critical piece of the puzzle when creating marketing plans. If your product or marketing strategy doesn’t resonate with your target audience, you won’t get very far. To the detriment of their product rollout, many companies look past the needs and behaviors of their potential customers.
Consider hosting a focus group or event about the product to not only discuss it but also hear feedback on what different customers are looking for in a product like this. Take both positive and constructive feedback into account and discuss it with your team afterwards.
Dive into the data about your current and ideal customers, noting their typical age ranges, buying behaviors, demographics, and other pertinent information. Use this to document your buyer personas on paper. Having a clear understanding of your consumers will inform your strategy, increase its relevance, and help you target them more effectively.
3. Not Taking Your Blogging Seriously
Blogging is still an area of marketing that a handful of companies fail to invest in enough. Close to 80% of internet users today read blogs, so they’re worth every bit of your consideration when it comes to driving traffic to your website.
Make sure that your blog content provides value and accurately represents your brand or product. Author professional-quality content with a combination of evergreen and seasonal topics.
Conduct keyword research so that you can understand what your consumers are searching for, implement that into your content, and have a higher chance of ranking for topics that make the biggest difference. End your blogs with strong calls to action that direct people toward your products and services and, above all, publish with consistency!
4. Trying to Do It All Yourself
One of the biggest marketing mistakes companies make, while it may be well-intentioned, is trying to do it all. We’re here to tell you—it’s not the most effective route.
Working with a designated marketing professional or team allows you to delegate initiatives and get the best results from their expertise while focusing on your own strengths. A credible team of marketers can help you set actionable goals and optimize your marketing campaigns to achieve results over time.
5. Not Providing Enough Value Upfront
The golden rule of marketing is to make sure that the “give” weighs as much as the “ask”. This goes hand-in-hand with keeping your target audience in mind at all times.
Don’t invest marketing dollars into getting quick sales without considering how or if you’re providing value. When you add value from the beginning of the process to the end, you get more buy-in and long-term investment from your customers.
The key here is understanding what items, education, or other marketing avenues will successfully meet your target audience where they are now and provide immediate value. A digital example of this may be creating an informative, “how-to” video to send to prospects with helpful tips that are relevant to your industry.
Another route? Provide value in the form of physical items. Free products provide an excellent way to offer upfront value to potential customers while informing them about your company and what you offer. Consider giving out practical items that will get use like promotional pens, tote bags, or branded apparel. Your brand will stay on customers’ minds the more they use your promotional products.
Providing value upfront makes for smoother, easier sales conversions later.
6. Using Lazy SEO Strategies
Don’t fall short with your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Looking at consumer behavior today, an incredible amount of people are searching for solutions online. This means that finding your products and services online is more accessible to your customers than ever.
Unfortunately, this also means that your competitors will be trying to reach the same target audience online. This is why it’s important to ensure your website is kept up to date with best practices.
To say search engines like Google are prominent across the web would be an understatement. Users use them to find information about everything. Focusing on SEO will improve your Domain Authority (DA), Page Authority (PA), and rankings for the most important keywords. (In other words, you’re more likely to show up as a contender when customers are searching for solutions that provide value.)
Keep your SEO strategy top of mind and optimize relevant website pages for it on a regular basis.
7. Overlooking Data and Observations
The more information you have at your fingertips, the easier it’ll be to reach your customers and sell them your products. Many companies neglect data, and instead rely on feeling their way through their marketing campaigns.
Track your marketing objectives every step of the way so that you can make adjustments when necessary. Some important marketing metrics to track may include:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Page views and website bounce rate
- Engagement rate
- Lead-to-customer conversion rate
- Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Observing this type of data helps you to look at things objectively so you can take action if something is working well or needs to be improved.
8. You Don’t Have an Email List
Never overlook the importance of email marketing. Those customers who opt in to your email list are high-value consumers who are more likely to do business with you again.
Having an email marketing strategy is important because it helps you market to those people long-term. Some of the benefits of email marketing include:
- Gaining valuable feedback from your consumers
- Promoting new products and services more effectively
- Generating sales with strong calls to action and conversion strategies
- More receptivity since they had to opt in
You can start your email marketing strategy well before your product launch to build anticipation and continue it years after your product is released.
9. Neglecting to Make Improvements
The best form of marketing you have going for you is a previously satisfied customer. They will spread the word, and this word can spread faster than ever thanks to online reviews.
Companies often lose sight of this, and end up marketing their product relentlessly without giving much thought to how they can improve its quality or value.
Implement quality control measures to make sure your product is always achieving its goal. Put together focus groups and surveys when necessary to get honest feedback. Most importantly, make adjustments when something isn’t working with your target market and avoid getting tunnel vision.
10. You Don’t Market With Enough Consistency
Many companies give up when they don’t get immediate results with their marketing. Consistency is the most important attribute of marketing, because success takes time.
Make sure that you invest in a long-term strategy that addresses all the different points of the consumer journey. To achieve this, ensure your team is energized and dedicated to marketing the product for the long haul. Consider sharing gifts with team members to help motivate and incentivize them. Hold regular meetings to touch base on progress, share wins and opportunities, and celebrate positive benchmarks together.
Avoid These Common Marketing Mistakes to Achieve Success
Mistakes happen, and that’s okay. Catching them when they do and getting back on track is what’s most important.
Marketing mistakes like these can short circuit your product campaigns before they even get started in earnest. Dedicate yourself to addressing mistakes like these and see the positive impact it has on your business for yourself.
Marketing your product efficiently takes thoughtful strategy, consistency, and continuous improvement over time. It may sound a bit overwhelming but, trust us, better input leads to even better output. Plus, there’s no better feeling than when your target market recognizes your value and your hard work pays off.
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