Many of the following bad practices seem to stem from an outdated mentality about business and marketing. If you find yourself using a few of these, you may need to update your understanding of marketing or even hire a marketing firm. Let’s get right into the list.

  1. You build it they will come Mentality- Just because a product or service exists, doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers will find you. Great businesses without exposure are invisible. Once you know what you’re selling, you need to develop a go-to-market strategy to maximize your impact in the marketplace. You need to find out who your ideal customer is, find out where they hangout or search for the solution to the problems you solve, and then craft a message that resonates with them.
  2. Word of Mouth Marketing- Let’s start with the facts. 92% of consumers will believe a recommendation from friends and family over ANY other type of advertising. That simple statistic casually hides one of the most powerful truths in marketing: Your biggest marketing asset is your existing customer base. But what if you’re a smaller business, or new business and the 3 customers you have had isn’t enough to build your business to where you want it, in the time you’d prefer? Should you keep your day job until you slowly build a customer base through referrals? I’m here to tell you that, that won’t be necessary with the right marketing in place. That’s why marketing exists. Some people don’t want to wait years to build a business organically. And those who do eventually hit a plateau. So then what do you do? That’s when it’s time to scale your marketing efforts.
  3. Free Marketing Methods Only-  The saying that ‘the best things in life are free’ is actually the complete opposite when it comes to marketing. Typically speaking, free types of marketing are usually low quality, overused and ineffective; while paid methods can be highly effective, extremely targeted, with immediate results. Newer companies tend to want to spend the least amount of money as possible, which is reasonable, but not to have a marketing budget at all is a complete mistake. That’s like trying to start a car washing business without paying for soap or water.  There’s no successful business in the world that does not spend money on marketing. Many of the companies you spend money with today got your attention through some type of advertisement. Whether that was a TV commercial, radio or print ad, google search, or social media post, all of those mediums syndicate free content so that they can sell advertising to the audience and users.  The focus should really be on value. Especially when it’s possible to track return on investment. There are a few metrics that you, your marketing department, or your marketing agency should be tracking to help you to determine the value of your marketing dollars.
  4. Directories Aren’t Advertising- The next thing newer companies do, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s a bit out of date is getting listed into directories. This modern equivalent to being listed in the phone book. There’s nothing wrong with being listed in the phonebook, and it used to be how people found you. But unless they knew your name, and just needed to know your phone number, the more effective way to standout was to BUY a full page ad in that same phone book. Now the modern day phone books are pages like Yp.com or yelp. Getting listed in these directories can help for SEO purposes, but to have them as your only online representation helps them more than it helps you. At the same time someone is viewing your profile, there is another 5 company profiles with better  user ratings that your being promoted. You want your prospects to see you, and you only.
  5. Spamming- Another really bad habit new business owners do is spam people. This used to take place often in email where people would ‘cc’ dozens if not a few hundred people in their contact list. The modern form of this is when people copy and paste the same message to everyone on their friends list on Facebook to have look at their website, or new business opportunity. There’s actually a better way to do this that not spammy and won’t get you blocked. Its called, advertising. Spending money on ads. Its cost effective, allows you to target very specific, and won’t get you banned from the site.
  6. Priced Based Promotionals- There’s nothing wrong with a great promo. The problem comes in where you’re basically giving the farm away just to get a few customers. Many newer business think that they must compete on price or give away their product for free in the beginning to get support. The problem with this is that it lowers the perceived value of your product or service and it kills your profit margins. And once one person gets something for free or extremely discounted, they are likely to share that experience with others. So instead of them saying, “I paid $xx.xx for this (product or service) and it was totally worth the money… here’s why you should buy it too.” They are instead saying, “I got this (product or service) for free or nearly free…. You should contact them and see if you can get the same deal.” You’ve lost any ability to position your company, and started creating a culture of people looking for handouts. Think about Apple products. People know they are the most expense in their industry, and they still have a cult following. It’s not because of the price. They’ve built a brand based on the quality of the products and the ease of use.
  7. Affinity Towards Print Ads- The last on the list the attraction to print ads. It’s very common for newer business owners to get business cards printed, flyers, and begin passing them out and posting them everywhere. There are a couple of things wrong with these methods; the biggest one being that you can’t track the effectiveness of print ads. Smaller and newer businesses or business owners with old fashioned understanding of business just want to “get the word out” and seem to be partial to things they can touch and put their hands on. Just “getting the word” out isn’t good enough, because it’s not quantifiable. Simply put, there are other, more effective methods to getting customers.