The analogy between marketing and a business is similar to the relationship of body and food. Marketing is the heart of the business. Every business is different so each business has to offer marketing and development, which fits each unique business's need. There are many ways of developing and marketing for any business, but first let's find the true concept and definition of marketing.
Marketing definition:
"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".
1- Thinking advertising is marketing:
The biggest mistake most of the business owners make is to think advertising and spending money is the only marketing way exist. This group only focuses on advertising, which when the desire result is not achieved at the end of the month, they complain of how much money they wasted away. Advertisement is merely one of many ways of marketing.
2- You don't enjoy what you do:
As stated above Marketing has many ways and approaches. The main marketing for your business is to love what you do. Nothing is better than your "Love what you do" attitude since it brings out your creativity, shows your talent and tells everyone how devoted you are to your business. Your daily positive attitude defines the successful future of your business. The love of your business construe in your daily interaction with new clients, employee's moral and making important and effective marketing decisions. To be a good marketer for your business, first rule is your love for what you do.
3- Don't have a good business plan:
What is business plan?
"A written document describing the nature of the business, the sales and marketing strategy, and the financial background, and containing a projected profit and loss statement".
Having a business plan is like having a map. Many businesses start their business ignoring this very effective tool and get lost in the middle of the road. Every business plan states the exact details of the business's concept and outlines clearly the marketing strategies, profit and loss, demographic, place of business, finances and targeted niche market. In order to make a solid business plan:
A) Know your business inside and out
Knowledge of your business is important to know the answer to all the categories of business plan. If you do not know the concept of your product or service, business plan and the pillar of your business does not exist.
B) Study, analyze and scrutinize
When you know the back and forth of every detail in your business, you can access all the required information needed to project your business in a business plan. In order to access all this information you need to study, analyze and scrutinize every file and information in libraries, city records and valid informative site on the Internet.
C) Print it and have it accessible
When you put all the info together and created your fully detailed business plan, print a copy and keep a file handy and accessible.
Your projected analysis for the business works as a map to your success. Don't drive to an unknown destination, not having a map on hand.
4- Don't have any plans:
Marketing and developing its strategy is vital for every business. Marketing works as fertilizer to boost the lawn of your business. Even more importantly, marketing acts like sun to shed light and direction to your business for finding leads for the potential clients. Marketing is like having your open sign on in the dark street. I think I emphasized enough and you understood how important marketing is for any business, small or large.
5- Not analyzing the market for correct pricing.
Every business offers products or services. Then producing and providing the products and services involves certain cost and fees. Setting the price according to the market is very important and cause for a major failure for small businesses if done without market awareness. The root and source to find a perfect price is your business plan. It is necessary for every small business owner to investigate:
A) The demographic income of the targeted niche and audience:
The business plan states the average income of the targeted audience and the niche market. Set prices based on the factual statistic and spending ability of potential clients.
B) Market needs and economy balance:
An involved business owner is always aware of the market needs and the economy balance. Based on your niche market, be on top of the factors of change in economy that can impact your client's ability to spend. If you deal with bankers and investors, keep up with stock market news and its daily changes and adjust your prices regularly.
C) Competitive market prices:
A business person is always on a lookout for its competitors and is aware of their side of story. It is necessary to know your competitors and adjust your prices based on their offering and similar services.
D) Demand of the product or service:
Investigate the demand before putting the price tag on your product and service. You can find this information through the data in your business plan. Balance your prices based on the market demands;
If you projecting a good volume of sale, price it lower than competitors.
If the demand is lower and the project of volume is slow, price higher to accommodate the distance between each sale.
E) Uniqueness of the product or service:
A unique product and service in the market attracts more attention. Price it higher than other regular products.
F) Acceptable profit margin range in the area:
Profit margin's acceptability is always decided based on the market and economy as well as the market demand for the product.
Consider a big city. If you have a product or service that is unique, but projecting a high volume of demand, based on the economy and your targeted niche, the profit margin should set higher than normal.
In a small community, If you are investing on a product with limited demand, go conservative on your profit margin.
6- Not having any budget
Many small business owners make a big mistake and do not place any budget for daily, monthly or yearly marketing plans. Whatever the profit and loss data projects on your business, it must include certain amount of budget for marketing plans that are realistic and traceable. Unfortunately small business owners mostly have no budget and deduct the cost of marketing plans from their profit data. This particular budget assignment is very effective in the future of business growth. Increase the marketing budget with business slowly reaching the peak of demands for your product and services.
7- Spending money on non-traceable ads
As the market changes, so as the marketing plan, pricing and target audience. Invest and assign marketing plans that are traceable. Traceable marketing means follow-up charts to analyze data.
The worst mistake of marketing is to spend money on a plan that cannot be traced and measured. This marketing mistake is wasting money or in other terms is shooting in the dark.
8- Do not trace the result
Many businesses have assigned a budget for the traceable marketing plan but sadly do not follow-up on the result and do not trace it. This is just the same as spending wasteful money on non-traceable.
9- Think in a closed box:
Each business is unique. Even if the business offers a same product as other business few streets down the road, the two are still unique and different in many ways. The biggest mistake small business owners make is to follow other businesses' footsteps. Marketing and its strategies should not have any limitation. Think of marketing out side of the box and do not limit the marketing strategies to a cliché approach others do. Be creative and design a plan unique and suitable for the very business.
10- Don't know what plans to set:
Everyone is familiar with the word marketing. The first conversation when opening a new enterprise is "Lets do marketing!" But do we all really realize the core meaning of it?
I compare marketing strategies and its unique approach to our fingerprints, which is distinctive. Many understand the word marketing but are not familiar with how to set the strategy and the game planning related to the business.
It is a big mistake not knowing how to set the strategies while being fully aware of marketing important role in the business. Since setting the marketing plan requires research, analysis and knowledge of he market, hire a professional researcher and marketer to create the necessary game plan.
11- Assuming the product or service will sell itself:
One of the biggest marketing mistakes is to assume your product or service is going to sell itself. This assumption is misleadingly translating marketing into advertisement. I have met many small business owners who declared that quote-to-quote "I don't spend money on the marketing, to me I only rely on word of mouth".