Marketing | Startup
3 Beginner Marketing Mistakes for Startups & Entrepreneurs to Avoid
Learn how to steer clear of these errors & increase the quality of your content & conversions
We all know marketing is a requisite for any business to thrive, regardless of its industry; it’s the crux that separates the good from the great, the wheat from the chaff.
Like any other skill, it can take multiple months, years, and failures to truly grasp and apply the key marketing concepts. This is especially true for new entrepreneurs and startup businesses who are entering the market fresh.
However, in the time it takes to properly learn these fundamentals, you could lose thousands of potential customers and dollars due to ineffective marketing.
In my 2 years as a marketing consultant, I’ve seen new companies make similar errors time and time again when first starting out.
To help you overcome this, I’ve detailed the 3 most common beginner marketing mistakes and how you can avoid them.
1. Define Your Audience Using Specific Variables
Even if you’re not in marketing, you almost certainly know that knowing your audience is the marketing cornerstone; without an audience, you have no one to market to.
While this may seem like a silly point to highlight, the most common aspect I’ve seen novice marketers and businesses miss is in adequately defining who their target consumer audience is. The mistake comes from trying to target an audience that is too general or broad. Instead, you want to get as specific as possible.
Let’s use a tech startup as an example; they are creating a smartphone app for outdoor enthusiasts where users can share their pictures, experiences, and notes about various hiking and nature trails. When asked who their target audience is, it’s natural to reply, “We are aiming to market to people who hike and walk trails.”
While this is factual, it doesn’t tell you anything worthwhile about the individual consumer you want to market to. Due to this, in the future once the startup begins more specific digital marketing, they will lose thousands of dollars in misguided ads.
Instead, it’s much better to determine specifics about your target audience. Using the above example, it’s obvious you want users interested in hiking and trail walking; however, you can make it even more specific by determining your audiences age range, location, and preferred social media platforms.
This allows you to go from:
“We are aiming to market to people who hike and walk trails.”
To:
“We are aiming to market to users aged from 25–45 who located in southern US major cities which have year-round hiking and who use Facebook and LinkedIn as primary social media platforms”
The bottom description gives you a much clearer picture of your audience and much more to go on when starting digital marketing campaigns. The key is to get as many key specifics as possible on your target audience so you can test these variables on data and conversions down the line.
2. Align Your Content & Campaigns With Your Audience
One of the key aspects of any marketing plan is storytelling. You can essentially think of your overall narrative, campaigns, and content as pieces weaving together a story to your audience.
It’s in this story being adequately communicated and conveyed to your users that you will start to see your marketing efforts pay off. Unfortunately, this is the step where most marketing plans fall short.
Have you ever been at dinner with someone who is telling you a mundane story where they get off track in useless details and confusingly switch subjects part way through? This is exactly how your audience feels when content and campaigns aren’t aligning with the overall narrative your company or brand are trying to tell them.
This can happen for a number of reasons, but the biggest issue is often shiny object syndrome.
Shiny Object Syndrome
This occurs when you come across a new trend or idea that catches your eye and you want to incorporate it into marketing as soon as possible. In today’s fast paced world, this is easier than ever to do.
Luckily, there is an easy solution to make sure everything you put out aligns with your larger goal: make a content checklist.
I know this sounds too simple to be true, but this method has saved me many headaches in the past. Essentially, your checklist ensures any content you or a member of your marketing team puts out will reflect your vision and brand.
An example of a checklist I used in the past is:
- Does this content align with the company brand, vision, and message?
- Does this use wordage consistent with our larger campaigns?
- Are the messaging & graphics clear to the intended audience?
- Does this include a Call to Action to improve engagement?
Making sure all of your posts and releases are answering your checklist items will ensure your marketing is keeping its eye on the prize and not losing focus on the shiniest object.
Every piece of content should tie back to and enforce the larger narrative you are conveying to your audience; once all of your pieces align and reinforce your company’s brand and vision, you will see marked improvements in your marketing efforts.
3. Track Your Data & Conversions
A quote almost every marketer is familiar with comes from John Wanamaker:
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Unfortunately, Wanamaker’s words ring true for many small and emerging businesses as many send marketing funds and campaigns out into the ether without a proper way to test results.
While this method may indeed get new customers and orders, it only serves to waste funds as you gain no insight into which avenues are actually earning you a return on spending.
However, with the age of the internet, it’s easier than ever to set up tracking to ensure our marketing budget is getting results.
There are numerous ways to set up analytics on your site, and many marketers have preferences on which platforms work best. Personally, I have found that Google Analytics (GA) is the best for website data and conversions.
Once set up correctly, GA can be used to create a map of how users journey through your site. This allows you to see where they are leaving and what improvements can be made to increase engagement time.
For social media marketing, the social media sites should have their own respective analytics page for you to check. These give you insights on impressions, new followers, and engagement which you can use to gauge how well certain campaigns or content posts have done.
Setting up adequate data and conversion tracking is the pinnacle to effective marketing; once you can create a picture of how well your campaigns and advertising avenues are performing, it will open up a whole world of next steps.
To recap, 3 easy ways to ensure your marketing efforts will be off to a great start are to adequately define your audience, make sure your content is aligned with your audience, and to set up data and conversion tracking.
Doing so will not only put you miles above the competition, but will set you up for even greater success as you and your business continue to grow.
Thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts in the comments as well as any other marketing topics you would like me to cover in the future!
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