The result of your marketing is only as successful as your company’s strategy. You will need a strong and effective marketing campaign in order to connect with the right audience and gain new customers. Anything less than this is a waste of your valuable time and money and as a smaller business, there isn’t much room for setbacks.

To avoid wasted expense and time, here are 3 of the most common mistakes to avoid and tips on how you can turn these marketing mistakes into marketing success.

1. Not Fully Understanding Your Audience

Solution – Target those who are just like your most successful clientele.

It can be easy to focus on who you want your audience to be while ignoring who your current customers actually are. And the fact is, you can have the perfect marketing message, design, and strategy, but it needs to be seen by the right people to have any success.

Understanding your market and customers, is essential for tapping into a new audience. As a small to medium-sized business you have the unique ability to generate closer relationships with your customers, unlike large franchises have. These relationships are what have built your customer loyalty and the characteristics that make up your loyal customers, are the same characteristics you want in a new audience you are reaching.

Data identification tools like Look-Alike Analysis can easily solve this common marketing mistake. It takes information from your most successful customers and locates records of potential clientele who “look like” those customers. It then creates a mailing list for you to reach those new prospects while generating a much more successful marketing campaign.

For example, if you own a sporting goods shop and are marketing towards coaches and local middle-aged consumers who show interest in sports, you may be surprised to find that the majority of your customers, are parents to children of the ages 12-18, with a household income of 75k-100k.

When you understand who your customers are, you can then target a new audience who share the same interests, demographics, locations and more as your current clientele. Therefore, reaching consumers who are most likely going to take advantage of the products or services you have to offer, resulting in an exponential growth in sales.

2. Reaching Out Only Once

Solution – Utilize a multi-drop campaign to enhance and maintain a top-of-mind presence.

The goal of marketing is to get your message in the hands of your audience and have them respond and convert, right? A single-drop campaign or a onetime push campaign, like sending out one postcard to a large audience, is not as effective in creating those conversions. This is because it takes time to build awareness and to create a reaction or response. Meaning when you “drop” your message in your audiences’ hands multiple times, you will always net more responses.

The more we see something, the better it sticks in our mind, which is why multi-drop campaigns generate greater success. Now, that doesn’t mean you need to send out multiple postcards to the same large audience—that can become expensive. Instead, you could send three postcards to a smaller and more targeted audience for the same price as the one mailing to many recipients, while increasing your ROI.

For example, you never see—or maybe you just don’t remember—a tv commercial just once, right? Instead, it replays every other, if not every commercial break. This is because TV advertisers understand the importance of showing their advertisement multiple times, and it works! Whether you are going to take the commercial up on its offer or not, you always remember the brand.

The first time you market to someone—within any channel of marketing—more often than not, they don’t notice it or aren’t familiar with your brand so they don’t fully trust it. The 2nd time they become more aware and start to feel that your brand has value. And the 3rd time is when you get the results you worked for. The consumer has become aware, familiar and are now intrigued or ready to buy.

3. Using a Single Medium

Solution – Market online and offline.

Using a single medium to market your message, simply won’t cut it. People are consuming marketing messages on a variety of channels, and many ignore or don’t have access to certain ones. Your online display ads can be blocked, or your emails may be sent straight to the promotion's inbox. Or perhaps a handful of your audience doesn't have a social media account.

When marketing within a single channel you’re missing out on valuable exposure and better brand recognition. Instead, use a multimedia marketing strategy like a postcard and email campaign, or a printed newsletter along with posting a social media article.

When marketing across multiple channels in this way, you are covering online and offline marketing platforms, and allowing your prospects and customers to engage with your brand in a way that is most convenient for them. In fact, it’s been proven that businesses who use multiple channels of marketing, have 300% greater success than those who use a single marketing channel.

Going multichannel with your marketing has the same increased exposer benefits as a multi-drop campaign as well. Using online and offline channels increases the chances of your audience interacting with your brand, thus leading to higher brand awareness and conversion rates.

Marketing online and offline also provides the perfect integrated marketing strategy. You can deploy the same marketing message within your direct mail campaign, email and social media marketing. This will build better brand awareness while ensuring that your message reaches your entire audience, even those who don’t have social media or check their email frequently. You can even include a URL or QR code on your postcards or catalogs to effortlessly direct your audience to your website or app.

Just like mistakes in life, marketing mistakes happen all the time, especially for businesses just starting out. However, these mistakes are costly, and time consuming and when avoided will do wonders for your customer acquisition and overall business growth.

If you're finding that your business is making one or even all these mistakes, or if you are just looking to grow your leads and sales, I invite you to speak with one of our experts today. There are so many valuable ways you can achieve these goals while saving time and money.

Brian Redden | VP, Sales and Marketing