Making mistakes is part of business life, we all make them.
The key is to learn from them or the best option is to avoid making them in the first place.
It is especially important when you are trying to attract customers to your business.
Here are 6 common mistakes that could be stopping you from attracting your potential customers.
No Marketing Strategy
Before you start to think of whether you should blog, be on Twitter or have a newsletter you need to have a marketing strategy in place. There are lots of reasons why, but the main one is it makes growing your business simpler.
And that is because it is tailored to want you want to achieve which in this case is getting more customers.
You don’t have to guess or hope your marketing tactics will work because you know they have been selected to specifically support your marketing strategy.
It gives you more confidence and does save time and money.
Stop And Start
This means that you implement a marketing tactic but because you are not gaining oodles of new customers quickly you stop.
Then you try another marketing tactic and when this doesn’t meet your expectations you stop and start again.
To overcome this you need to put some goals in place so that you can actually see what is working based on facts on not your perceptions.
It is also knowing which tactics are the best ones that will help you attract customers.
Me Too
If you have a competitor that is successful it can be tempting to copy what they are doing.
For example if they have a newsletter you develop one just like theirs. Or if they are offer an introductory price you lower your price to match them.
Develop your key point of difference and work out their weaknesses from a customer perspective so you can offer your potential customers a real reason to choose you.
Not Qualifying Leads
It can be tempting to chase every possible lead. You may think this will eventually lead to lots of new customer; however the opposite can be true.
By having a clear profile of your potential customer that you want to attract you will save yourself time and money.
Also, map out the steps your current customers have taken leading to a purchase. Then you can easily see if your potential customers are following the same path.
Scatter Gun
This mistake often goes hand in hand with Stop and Start.
You try and put in place many marketing tactics at once and hope one of them works to attract new customers.
As there are so many marketing tactics available, you need to work out a marketing budget and how much time you have available to implement the tactics effectively.
This will help you focus on the 2 or 3 marketing tactics that you can put in place and importantly test and track.
Not Following Up
Potential customers have an expectation that you actually want their business. They can be turned off if you do not respond to questions or inquires quickly.
Have a simple process in place. If you often get the same questions, such as developing an email template that you can use or if you have a website have a Q&A section that they can read.
If you do not follow up you can be sure they will remember and even tell other potential customers.
You may only get one chance to impress potential customers, so increase your chances by avoiding these simple mistakes.
How to you avoid marketing mistakes when you are attracting customers?
(This is an update of a previous article)
