Good marketing is the only way that a business can truly realize its potential, but so many of us are getting it wrong. With so many tips and tricks on how to market things correctly, it can feel difficult to cut through the noise and work out which bits of advice are important and which bits of your strategy you’re getting wrong. Here are some of the most prevalent mistakes that businesses make when marketing, and most importantly, how to fix them.
Getting reviewed should be an integral part of any business’s marketing plan, assuming of course that you aren’t absolutely terrible at what you do! Here at TycoonStory we have covered time and time again the pitfalls that startup businesses fall into, and not getting good reviews is one of them. Consumers put far more trust in companies that have good reviews, meaning that they’ll come to you over your competitor. Unfortunately, one of the simplest ways of getting reviewed is by sticking your company on Google and forgetting about it. Whilst this may well generate some good reviews, there’s one thing that many people forget: you never have to ask for a bad review. Some people are angels on Earth, if they have a satisfactory experience of a business, then they leave a review that says so, every time. However, most people are much faster to complain about a poor experience, than they are to praise a good one. With this in mind, if you just open up the reviews section on your Google or Yelp page and let people go to town, then the chances are, you’ll get a sprinkling of the happy customers and every last one of the unhappy ones.
One way to avoid this is by making sure you never have an unhappy customer, but as the old saying goes, you can’t please everyone. The other way of avoiding this is by making sure people realize how much you appreciate a good review. Don’t bombard people’s inboxes with review requests, we all know how annoying that can be, but if a customer seems delighted with your service, ask them if they would mind leaving a review for you. The more happy customers you ask to leave a review, the more the balance is restored.
Another way for businesses to ensure that they always receive a balanced review is to get in touch with specialist review websites. This strategy works best for those working in sectors that tend to be service-based, rather than product-based. An example of a sector where these kinds of review sites are prevalent is the iGaming sector. AsiaBet is a market leader in this sector, providing impartial advice on the best betting sites for people in Asia to use. They employ experts to give their opinions on the casino bonuses, sports betting, and security and safety measures that iGaming sites have in place. Unlike Google who’s main contributor is the disgruntled customer, professional review sites like these are genuinely unbiased, meaning that people can access a trusted review on what your business has to offer.
One of the most common marketing mistakes that businesses make, particularly those that are in the early stages, is to advertise to the wrong set of people. If for example, you’ve created a new technological backpack that enables you to reduce the size of your helmet, knee pads, and skateboard into one easy-to-carry bag, then your first instinct might be to market it to skateboarders. You begin to market it and you get a few sales, but success is limited and you begin to think that it’s just not a very good invention. What has actually happened is you’ve created an actual tardis and skateboarders are one of the last groups of people who need it.
Think about the wider applications of your new invention, before tailoring your marketing plan to suit the most lucrative target audience. In the case of the backpack, skateboarders are a fairly small target market, but supermarkets are huge. They need people to be able to carry all of their shopping home, in many countries there’s a surcharge for plastic bags, often customers don’t have cars making transportation a problem. If your magical backpack could squeeze down a week’s worth of shopping into a single carrier bag then it would be a best-seller.
Of course, this example is a little farfetched, but whether you’ve created a clothing brand that you thought was for cheerleaders or a computer that you thought was for commuters, the chances are if your target market matches your own description, then you need to look more carefully into who you’re marketing to. We know all of the qualities of ourselves inside and out, but we sometimes don’t realize the hidden depths of other groups. Bring together focus groups and spend a good amount of time researching your customer before plunging into expensive marketing strategies.
