Top 5 mistakes when you’re a novice marketer

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

By Ellen Royce

Let us say you have a landmark product that will revolutionize its respective industry. Or, perhaps, you have a cutting-edge service, and once put into the marketplace, your customer base will skyrocket. Both of these sound pretty amazing, and yes, once people know about your goods or services, they will clamor to get their hands on them.

The only problem lies in inspiring new clientele or customers to seek you out and take advantage of this new great idea. The simple answer is marketing. And like Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, novice marketers can sometimes get so entrenched in the pursuit of promoting that their efforts collapses under the weight of their limited experience.

Common marketing mistakes

We all want our business to succeed and make plenty of money by improving customers’ lives with our wares. But there is a disconnect between how much promotion is enough and the time frame. So many variables can make novice marketers’ heads spin. And that is where mistakes happen.

For example, it will be good if you have a 50% discount coupon for any product, or you want to provide your regular users with 10 free no deposit loans for the promotion service. This will all be a great bonus to attract customers. How did you get the word out? How do you limit social networks to attract enough attention so your business receives traffic but does not decrease due your inability to keep up with product demand?

5 ways not to fail

To get an idea of what you should work on, the easiest way is to learn what you should avoid:

-Underpromoting

You know who you are, and you know what you are selling. And that is all fine if you are your only customer. The common denominator to selling is having someone to buy. You must get the word out, and with social media, email, and online content engines, it is easier than ever to blanket the digital landscape with intrigue that will drive clicks, promote traffic, and get people in the door.

One of the biggest digital marketing mistakes is not using these digital tools enough. Everyone is online on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and they are looking for you. So, introduce yourself.

-Limit discounts

A few coupons or discounts at the beginning are fine. In fact, your business promotional budget should have already compensated for it. But giving away the farm multiple times in a row is a recipe for failure. Your business can’t make money if everything is 75% off.

Limit your ongoing discounts. Keep military ones, for example, because people love to support the business that supports our warriors and veterans. Just don’t make a new coupon every single day. You WILL be taken advantage of.

-Keep the love alive

Getting people through the door is a win, ignoring them after — not so much. A good marketer knows how to maintain the balance between keeping a customer informed and not overtaxing the relationship with idle chatter. The worst marketing mistake of all time is ignoring the needs of your clients.

This can also translate well to marketing mistakes during COVID-19, where lots of people are doing their shopping via delivery services ordered over the internet. Even if you never see them physically, there is a real person on the other end of that order. Never ignore your customers.

-SEO and Keywords

Keywords rule the Internet as they pertain to how search engines find specific things online. But keyword saturation is specific, and oversaturation of a blog or article kicks you to the back of the line. No one can see you back there when those who followed the rules are right in front of your customer’s face.

Ignoring the guidelines of proper keyword optimization is one of the digital marketing mistakes to avoid. Research the keywords you need to get seen and keep them within 2.8% to 3.4% of the overall document.

-Know your audience

Today, the society is split between the hyper-sensitive cancel culture and the people who would rather roll with the punches than rock the boat. And because of this dichotomy, it is more critical than ever to keep in mind that some will look for reasons to destroy you, purely out of self-righteous, vindictive boredom.

Some of the most global marketing mistakes, the most famous marketing mistakes, have been a simple yet obvious failure of a company that did not read the room. Think long and hard about who you are going to market to and who else might chime in. Someone who isn’t even your customer base can destroy you with a few keystrokes.

These days, it isn’t easy to know how to avoid marketing mistakes. It can often be trial and error that is your best teacher. The school of hard knocks can be rough, but it polishes a marketer into a diamond quickly, especially in such a fast-paced world.

Conclusion

Ignorance in marketing is never bliss. One of the biggest marketing mistakes is not having a handle on what are the marketing mistakes to avoid. But that doesn’t mean just because you don’t know, you are doomed to fail. However, there is a correlation between marketing mistakes and success. Look at major brands who blundered and lost billions because of one bad choice. All a novice marketer can do is research, absorb insight from experts, and learn from their mistakes. Have you ever tried to market something and had it fall flat because of a lack of promotional experience?

______

Ellen Royce is a business consultant with experience of over 15 years. She specializes in training for web development and social media marketing. She has written articles for many prestigious newspapers and five marketing bestsellers. An avid reader, Ellen likes to recharge the batteries in her ancestral home library at Bibury.

Leave a Reply

The Self-Employment Survival Guide can help you succeed. Learn all about it here.

Self-Employment Survival Guide book cover