6 Marketing Mistakes Made by Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

If entrepreneurs and small business owners do not market themselves, chances are, they won’t be in business for long. Here are some mistakes entrepreneurs may overlook or struggle with when marketing themselves:

1. Thinking that one ‘touch’ is going to do the trick. I have recently been in conversations with someone who does workshop and he has done one mailing to 300 people and thinks that marketing doesn’t work because no one contacted him based on that mailing. I have been trying to help him understand that his first mailing didn’t even cause a blip in the brains of those who even saw it. I encouraged him to narrow his mailing list and to “mail the heck out of them.” (I think that is the language I used).

2. Thinking that one kind of marketing is going to do the trick. Today, there are so many options for marketing and we need to consider all of them. Direct mail, email, articles that draw people to our websites, social media, face to face, ‘stuff,’ word of mouth…it’s ALL important and very few entrepreneurs can go with only one type.

3. Not understanding that you need to build your ‘list.’ If you only have 6 people or 73 people or some reasonably small number of people to whom you are marketing, they had better be pretty darn responsive or you’ll starve! Building a list through opt-in methods is the way to go and it’s part of why it’s smart to offer products (digital, for example) for free. People come to your website, find what you offer to be helpful, download it, take the teleseminar (or whatever), and if they like what they receive, they “hang out” for awhile. The hope is that they will continue accessing some other products or services. Someday…they’ll buy…or at least that’s the idea. Since you are in business, if no one buys, you are not in business for long, but it’s about building relationships along the way.

4. Not budgeting time to do all the marketing activities that need to be done. It’s extremely short-sighted to say you don’t have time to market. If you don’t MAKE time to market, you’ll soon have nothing but time because you’ll be out of business. And remember, you do not have to do it all yourself. Tap into the expertise that is out there.

5. Not paying attention to the marketing intervals in addition to the marketing frequency. If you send out something 15 times, but over 15 years, you won’t have much (i.e., any) impact. Your marketing needs to be frequent but also done within a short enough time frame that people remember and think, ‘oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen this person/service/business before.’

6. Not realizing that you are either going to spend money or time or both. You can’t market without some investment of your capital – either the $$ or the time part. Target your message and your efforts so you don’t dilute your impact.

See if you are making any of these mistakes – and if you are, take steps this week to start correcting them. It will be perilous to your business if you don’t.