10 Common Small Business Marketing Mistakes

If you’re a small business owner, you’ll usually have to wear a number of different hats during the day to day running of your business and it’s not easy to be an expert in many different areas.

Marketing your business effectively is critical to its short and long term success, so here we’ve identified 10 of the most common online marketing mistakes small businesses make.

Not identifying a target market

Before you do any marketing at all, it pays to have a clear idea of who your product or service is aimed at. When it comes to designing your website and writing the content for it, you need to appeal to the people you want to buy your product or service and connect with them.

Not doing enough research

If your small business is offering a new or innovative product or service, how do you know that people will either need it or want it? The time to find out is not when you’ve had a website designed and spent a fortune on Google Adwords with little or no return; it’s at the planning stage.

Building a poor quality DIY website

In 2009, almost £50 billion was spent on internet retail sales in the UK, so if you want a share of the online market, your website will need to be up to scratch. There’s fierce competition online in almost every market sector so a poor quality website that looks homemade will not do you any favours at all.

Communicating features rather than benefits

Confusing features and benefits when it comes to website copy is a very common mistake. Let’s say you were selling golf balls online, a feature could be that they have a titanium core but why would that interest the reader? The benefit would be that you can hit them longer distances which of course would appeal to most golfers.

Advertising once and giving up

It’s widely accepted that people often have to see an advert or brand name 6 or 7 times before they will act on it. So if you decide to advertise your business online via Pay per Click, it pays to run a campaign consistently rather than doing it once and deciding it’s the wrong way to market your business.

Copying your competitors

Whether you’re trying to compete at a local or national level, copying your competitors is never a good idea whether it’s having very similar content on your website or using the same words on your Pay per Click adverts. Be innovative, do something different and people will notice your business.

Focusing all your attention on getting new business

It’s all too easy as a small business to concentrate on gaining new customers and forgetting about your previous or existing ones. Email marketing is a cost effective way to communicate with your client base and help keep them as loyal customers.

Not advertising when you’re doing well

If you fail to market your business when things are going well then you will find it difficult to expand as well as potentially missing out on lucrative orders for the future. For example shutting down a successful Pay per Click campaign or deciding to stop emailing past customers doesn’t make good business sense.

Having separate online and offline messages

It’s important to treat your online and offline marketing as one overall strategy. Too many small businesses fall into the trap of not combining their marketing efforts and end up with a haphazard approach that’s confusing to customers.

Failing to measure your marketing results

If you don’t measure your marketing results, how will you know what marketing efforts are worth continuing with and what’s losing you money? A simple “How did you find us?” option on an online contact form or analysing your Pay per Click statistics regularly can help you measure your return on investment.

What can small businesses learn from Supermarkets

What can small businesses learn from Supermarkets


Supermarkets spend millions on intelligent intuitive marketing and psychological persuasion to entice us to buy more. The layout, the lighting, the smells – nothing is left to chance and every little detail is tweaked for maximum effect..

How did the supermarkets get to this point? One word; DATA. Many ideas about shopping habits have been generated over the years but the theories that are in use now are the ones that were tested, analysed, refined, tested again and then implemented. 

So what can digital marketers learn from this?

Take control of who owns the conversion process

It is still a very grey issue as to who owns the look, feel and layout of the site, with IT departments still in control of the majority. 

However, would the Supermarkets have uncovered the optimum aisle placements, pricing strategy based on location and product grouping techniques if the construction team that built the store were making the decisions?


Unearth how visitors use your site

There is a wealth of tools and tactics that can be used in ecommerce to deliver the sort of key insight that drove the decision making when planning the layout of a supermarket.
Heat maps, customer surveys and usability audits are vital in telling us how people are using and navigating around our sites, in the same way it has been identified how supermarket shoppers navigate the aisles. "Understanding the customers’ shopping behaviours is critical and should form the basis of all ecommerce strategies" John Brodie says.


Identify and remove customer journey roadblocks

Reviewing user feedback and analysing site data can help uncover where the conversion barriers sit on a website and what is preventing visitors turning into customers.

We need to identify and remove these roadblocks in the customer journey whilst displaying key messaging and pushing core, high margin product lines in the same way that supermarkets do not block shoppers’ way, but do push the products that they want to sell.


Position products to maximise sales

Whilst it needs to be easier for users to find what they want online than in a supermarket (it’s a lot easier to abandon an online store than a physical supermarket when you already have a half full trolley), ecommerce sites can take a lot from the meticulously planned positioning of stock on supermarket shelves and the method of giving prominence to the most commercial products that have the highest profit margin can be easily employed.


"Also, the concept of positioning complimentary items next to each other can work incredibly well for ecommerce sites.  In the same way a supermarket shopper buying flour to bake a cake needs eggs and sugar, an online customer buying a dress can also be cross sold the shoes and accessories they need to make a complete outfit" Fiona Low says. 


Test, refine, then test again

Whilst there is a multitude of best practise layout and merchandising rules that should be followed online, it is vital we test and subsequently optimise the key customer journey points throughout ecommerce sites, just as the supermarkets tested their in store concepts.

Even testing small elements of web pages, such as colours of messaging and positioning of calls to action, can have a huge impact on user behaviour. Research shows that simple things such as improving your web page loading times will all have an impact on your overall conversion rate.

And with tools such as Google Website Optimiser that are completely free to use, the testing process can be carried out with minimal costs, hence delivery massive returns on investment.

There are also, however, offline principles that simply do not work when used online, and in a purely practical sense we obviously can’t use the supermarkets famous smell aids (although I am sure someone out there is working on a scratch and sniff usb).

But on balance and despite these differences there is a lot that ecommerce can take from a supermarket’s persuasive manner of making shoppers not only buy, but buy more than they intended to.

With the average retail conversion rate around 3%, 97% of visitors never buy anything. How would a supermarket or any bricks and mortar retail store survive on that return on footfall? E-commerce still has a lot of work to do to.

The Small Business Sales Strategy

How to get it wrong

Traditional, and hence flawed, sales is often about…

• How great you are
• How fabulous your company is
• How wonderful your products are
• How much better you are than your competitors

In other words…

• ‘Me, me, me and me’

Ordinarily each statement in isolation is not particularly harmful, however when such statements are presented as a whole it tends to suggest that the sale has completely the wrong focus.

The focus needs to be on the customer not the seller

To quote the lyrics of a song from legendary mod outfit; The Jam, which is it…

“The public gets what the public wants”

It is not what you can say to a potential customer that necessarily matters, it is what they can tell you and how you can in turn make them feel. In other words you need to think in reverse, for when you change your focus a whole new world opens up to you.

So…

Forget the sales patter and standard descriptions of your products, instead discover what makes your customer tick and get inside their mind.

Your mission is to help them buy from you, not sell them something – this is a subtle yet profound difference …and is at that heart of successful small business marketing strategy and thinking. This includes your webside too!

Cheaper is not necessarily better

No one likes to over pay for things. The internet is a great leveller and gives us a quick way of gaining the best prices and services available. The dreaded “Credit Crunch” has also helped add to the price consciousness of purchasers but cheaper is not always better especially when it comes to web design.

The rise of out sourced web designers and independent consultants through sites such as eLance and Odesk have opened the market up further. This has tended to make web design almost a commodity and many businesses are treating as this. UK businesses need to recheck their perspective! It is no longer enough to simply have a web presence. You must remember what a website actually is. For many people it is the first contact a prospect has with your business and they can visit your competitor in seconds. If you were looking for a new TV and on your local street were 2 consumer electronic stores; one which was perfectly laid out with a great selection of TV’s all in one place and helpful assistants whilst the other was a little shabby, with a few gaps on their shelves and a bit confusing in its layout – which would you trust and choose? It is the same with your website!

Remember your website is your 24/7 representative, your PR agent, your business card – essentially it is more important than your premises, marketing literature and sales pitch –so you must invest in it and be sure it is 100% So here are a few tips when choosing a web designer or web design company:

·         Company Understanding: This is number 1. Whilst you may not have all of the skill to develop a website you need to be a major part of the process. This is your web site based on your business! You are the master of your business and its vision. Your web designer must show a keen interest in your story, vision and plans for the future. This means you are building a valuable brand and not just a website.

·         Market Understanding: Your web designer must also do his/her homework! I would expect and decent web design company worth their salt to look at the market you compete in and how the competition are positioning themselves to ensure the pitch is right and prospects choose you other your rival.

·         Business and Marketing Understanding: Whilst little Timmy can design a nice site from his bedroom on the cheap, what does this 14 year old know about marketing and business for that matter? Marketing does not work well in isolation, your marketing, sales pitch and outlook all needs to be linear to give a powerful, unified stance and not mixed messages which can put doubt into the mind of your potential customer. Your web designer might be exceptionally well skill and able to produce awesome 3D graphics but if people visit the site and don’t really get your business or see too many ideas jammed together they will think “nice site” but leave for your competitors. Your website has a purpose, this could be to sell, get people to call you, to inform or to capture opinions – it really doesn’t matter but it does matter if the whole site does not inspire the visitor to do what you want them to do. One of our customer sell high tech computer equipment. Before the worked with Igneous Marketing they had a flash site with every technical detail you could ever wish to see about the product they sold. They also had the price clearly marked. What they didn’t have was the customers. They had a great deal of traffic but people would simply use their site to learn about the products and then use the price and knowledge gained from the site to negotiate with the company’s competitors. Their site was a great sales tool.....unfortunately it was for the competition!

·         Commitment: This is another big point. Many of these independent web designers are essentially “box shifters” which sell websites then move on. So what happens if you need a few edits or changes to keep up with changes in your market? Where are they? Are they interested in helping or will they focus on the next big pay day by designing a new site for another business? You need to see your web designer as a partner for the long term. The closer you get, the more they will understand about your business and be able to tweak your site to be a true representation of your business.

Your website is crucial to your business and it’s future. A good website is never static, in fact one of Google’s new search engine ranking criteria is how often the site is updated and added to. You need to select a web designer that is committed to your business and understands your business, your market, your struggles, your successes and your rivals. A good web designer needs to see the bigger picture and have great business and marketing skills, not just the ability to create flashing images!

If you want a full, no obligation critique of your current site why not contact Igneous Marketing. We are offering a full analysis of your site for free as a loyal reader of our blog. Click here and get in touch!

Could you BUY the Competition?

One way to grow your small business is to buy another business and merge the two together. When the going gets though, i.e. a recession – many of the non-bootstrapping businesses will be for sale or in trouble. This is the time for you to sharpen your bootstrapping pencil and think about opportunities that present themselves.

If you do not know what to look for here are some pointers:

1. Customers complain about your competitor;
 2. Employees from your competitor apply for a job with your business;
 3. Competitors loosing the plot, i.e. unrealistically low prices;
 4. Court judgements against your competitor or disgruntled suppliers;
 5. Partners and directors resigning or leaving the business.
6. Is their online presence being neglected? Has it been ages since they updated their website? How does their social media output look?

Be aware of potential pitfalls, especially if you have never done this sort of thing before. Get your accountant to help you evaluate the competitor and then make a move.

Don’t loose your business focus, however tempting the opportunity. It is easy to damage your business with an uncontrollable acquisition.

What's Your Marketing Score?

Do you know how you attract your customers?

Do you know what is stopping you attracting more?

If not read on...

Hampshire based marketing agency, Igneous Marketing, is offering a free business and marketing review for local SMEs.

At no cost to you (and with no obligation to do anything further) Igneous Marketing will prepare a 10 page report analysing  your current marketing, sales potential and business in general plus make recommendations on how to move your business forward.

Click here to begin, it only takes 10 minutes!

What this offers:

A unique chance to see a snap shot of your business today.An external look at what you are doing in comparison to other small businesses and where your current road will lead you. Your business through new eyes.

Based on your business aims, a road map to achieve them.

This complimentary document will use the aims you have for your business and help pinpoint key strategies that can assist you achieve these goals.

This short questionnaire aims to discover where your business currently is compared to your competitors and the rest of the market. It should only take 10 minutes – but 10 minutes for a business shaping report isn’t much, is it?

Click here to begin

Creating A Website Brief

Hiring a web designer to build or revamp your website can be a major investment for a small business, so it is essential to get the brief right. Give your web designer unclear instructions and you could find yourself forking out for something that does not do the job. We explain the art of writing a good web design brief.

Talk through what you want with the web designer first. This will help you to draw up a specification for an acceptable design. They should tell you the pros and cons of the different choices you can make, and most will do this for free if they think they’re going to win the business.

These discussions will help you write your web design brief — the instructions telling the web designer how to build the site. While not legally binding, the brief is an important document. It can pull the designer back on track if they don’t deliver what you wanted, or go over budget.

Structuring the web design brief

Consider three things when writing a brief. Start with the technology. You need to ensure your site can be displayed by different web browsers on different devices. If your clients are likely to view you site on a mobile device, for example, you should seriously look at whether to use programmes like Flash.

The second key area is look and feel, so include some of your marketing material showing the colours, logos and house style in the brief. Make sure you give examples of websites you like and those that you don’t plus the reasons why.

Finally, be clear on what the site should achieve. This will help the web designer understand your business model — what you sell and who your customers are. Don’t forget that people scan websites, so it’s important that your pages aren’t cluttered with information and that people can easily find what they’re looking for.

Bear in mind that what you want the website to accomplish and what your visitors require from it may differ. Think about the needs of your audience and reflect these in the design brief.

Sticking to the web design brief and the budget

Plan ahead for the future development and maintenance of the site. You should be able to update it yourself rather than using external specialists. Otherwise you may be charged every time you want to change product information.

Throughout the process you need to keep an eye on the quality of the work and the budget. Give a clear date when you brief the web designer when the work has to be completed and regularly check the progress. Also remember that every time you change your mind and amend the brief, it might have an effect on the overall cost of the project.

Of course we are always ready to assist! Contact us today to talk through your web design plans. PLUS a new web site is part of our low cost, pay monthly marketing packages!