Marketing Mistakes And Pitfalls For Your Business To Avoid

When it comes to marketing your business, you might feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of things that have to be done.

Not only do business cards and other promotional materials need printing, your brand identity has to be spot on to help you stand out from the crowd. It’s not easy, but as the pressures build, mistakes can easily be made so here are five marketing errors and pitfalls for your business to avoid:

Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors

Whether you’re creating business cards via a site like Helloprint, or knocking up your own leaflets, make sure there are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Misspelt words and misused apostrophes not only look amateurish but it can be expensive to have marketing materials corrected – and this is certainly an extra cost you don’t want or need.

Confused branding
It’s important for your company to be instantly recognisable, so try to make your brand identity as strong as possible. This involves using the same colour scheme, logos and slogans for all marketing materials, making sure sales messages are the same across online and offline platforms. Going through a rebrand? Then ensure you phase out the old branding completely to avoid confusion.
Marketing something you don’t believe in
If you don’t feel passionately about what your business does, you won’t put your heart and soul into making it a success. So whatever you do, make sure your branding and company values reflect your personal morals and beliefs. For instance, if you know you can make more money by employing people overseas, but believe in using products and workers from your own country, stick to your guns and make the most of local resources.
Using social media for the wrong purposes
Using social media is a great way to connect and communicate with clients, though you must avoid common pitfalls of social media marketing. These include being overly promotional and trying to sell your products/services at every opportunity and not responding to customer comments on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other channels you might be present on. Even if people post negative feedback, you should still respond in a professional manner as this will help protect your brand.
Promoting stock you don’t have
If you are going to run a highly visual marketing campaign, always aim to deliver the services/items requested. Turning people away or not giving them the products they’ve ordered could damage the reputation of your company and will reduce profits. Of course, it’s not always easy to predict the success of a campaign, but it’s better to be over prepared than under.