Avoid These Marketing Mistakes for Your Small Business

A Home Business Article Contributed by Elizabeth Fox-Wise

Avoid These Marketing Mistakes for Your Small Business

Because small business typically has a small marketing budget, it is even more important that their marketing plan be effective and their limited resources not be wasted on marketing that will not work.

We will take a look at the three most common marketing mistakes often made by small business owners.

Too Little of Too Much is One Common Small Business Marketing Mistake

This is a mistake commonly made my small business owners with big goals and small marketing budgets. The small business owners want to try every type of marketing. Running ads in several newspapers, magazines, online and elsewhere. However, because they are so limited by their marketing budget, they end up with a tiny presence everywhere and not getting a lot of attention or results anywhere.

When it comes to marketing your small business, bigger is always better. Rather than pay for 6 small ads in 6 publications, you will get much better results with one large ad in one well chose publication. Furthermore, ads run once or twice will bring little or no results. Therefore, narrow down the publications you want to advertise in and run larger ads more consistently in those publications.

Thinking Too far out of the Box is Another Small Business Marketing Mistake

If you are a small business owner who thinks that all rules are meant to be broken, you may have trouble marketing your small business. While thinking outside of the box might be helpful in other aspects of running your business, when it comes to marketing, the tried and true methods are usually the most effective means.

Thanks to the billions of dollars that business spends on advertising each year, it has been studies more than most anything else related to running a business. These studies have found what works and what doesn't work when it comes to advertising. For example, it is well known that in magazine ads, one larger central photo works better than several small ones. On the other hand, newspaper ads, several photos are much more effective at capturing the attention of readers. If you are unfamiliar with the tried and true rules of the media you want to use, research it before advertising

Not Seeing the Forest Through the Trees is a Third Small Business Marketing Mistake

Sometimes a small business owner can get too focused on what is going on inside the business to be able to effectively market the small business to the outside world. This is the person that it is is said they can not see the forest through the trees or can not see the big picture past their small focus.

A small business owner who is too focused on the trees and can not see the forest may become complacent. They are much more likely to stay with an old marketing campaign even though it is no longer working for their business. This small business owner needs to stop looking only at the day to day operations of the business, but actively do some future planning and goal setting. Then adjust the marketing campaign to help the business reach those goals.