By Henry Brown

New entrepreneurs often start off doing all their own marketing. They don’t really know what they’re doing, and they try to pick it up as they go along. Eventually, many small business owners learn a lot of valuable things. However, they’re usually still far from being experts. Even those who think they know the tricks of the trade can struggle to get it right. If your marketing efforts don’t seem to be coming to fruition, there could be a lot of different reasons. Find out some of the reasons you might be failing and how you can fix it with these quick tips.

Your marketing is directionless.

It’s not uncommon for new business owners to jump straight into marketing their company without a plan. They want to start getting traction right away. So they start experimenting with different marketing methods. If this is you, you probably have no idea of what your marketing efforts are for. Of course, you want to make more sales of your product or service. However, you need to define how you’re going to do that more clearly. Setting goals for your marketing campaigns is vital. It helps you to measure how well you’re doing so you can change what’s not working and keep what is.

You’re trying to do it all yourself.

It can take years to become adept at just one area of marketing. As a business owner, you just don’t have time to do it all. You’re already trying to update your website, form business relationships, and much more. You can’t be in charge of all your marketing if you want to grow your business. Eventually, you need to get someone else on board to do it for you. Just running campaigns on Google Adwords can take a long time to master. And that’s only one aspect of digital marketing. You don’t have to wait until you can hire someone in-house. Outsourcing to an external company is affordable and sensible.

Your content is all wrong.

Ask many marketing experts and they will tell you that content is king. If you’ve created a content marketing strategy, you’re off to a good start. However, you need to make sure you’re getting it right. One of the most fundamental mistakes is simply creating the wrong content. Some business owners will create too much content talking about their own products or services. Experts suggest that you follow the 80/20 rule. Your content should be 80% informative, and the remaining 20% can be promotional.

You’re not following leads.

Marketing doesn’t just include increasing website traffic or building your mailing list. The people who come to your site or sign up to your newsletter haven’t necessarily bought anything. Just because they’ve completed a desired action, it doesn’t mean they’re making you any money. You have to make sure you’re following up on these leads. You should be, for example, emailing or calling them to let them know about your products.
If you’re not a marketing expert, don’t try to do it all alone. Getting experienced outside help will prevent you from failing.

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.