As a small business owner, you do not need to be told that you need to wear many hats. Multiple of which aren’t exactly ones you know how to wear, but you try to make it work anyway.

One such hat is marketing.

Marketing is essential for any business, but for small businesses, getting a good marketing strategy in place is vital to avoid wasting time, money, and resources. Such is the problem: Proxima found that 60% of marketing budgets are wasted, which is a considerable amount of effort all for nothing.

Sometimes it isn’t about what you know, but knowing what to avoid to help you limit mistakes and gain better results. Whether you’re launching an SEO campaign, a B2B email campaign, or you’re looking at your first social media marketing campaign, this post is going to dive into some of the more common mistakes small businesses make when it comes to marketing.

Not Having a Clear Plan

Your business as a whole would fail without a clear plan. Marketing is no exception. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, where you’re headed, and what the end goal is, you simply won’t get the results you need.

This is just a quick way to lose money, and it’s going to impact your bottom line directly. Your efforts won’t hit the mark because they have no direction, no real purpose, and no specific messaging that hits home for your audience.

If you’ve ever felt like no matter what you do, things just aren’t landing, this might be why. You need a clear, structured plan for your marketing. You need to know what you want, what results are expected, and what the long-term roadmap is as part of the bigger picture, not just the immediate future.

Not Understanding Your Target Audience

Do you know who you are marketing to? If you don’t, why not? If you don’t know who your messaging is for, who you need to target, you won’t see positive results.

It’s one thing to have a marketing plan in place; it’s another beast to know who that plan needs to target.

You need to go past demographics and surface-level data and invest time and effort to really understand your audience.

You need to know likes, dislikes, their pain points, values, etc. Without this, you are simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. You may see some results, but not at the level you want or need, and you’ll never truly connect with your audience without scratching the surface.

So before you rush out and push your marketing into the big wide world, stop, do your homework, create detailed personas, build value maps, and understand exactly who your customers are and what they want and need from you. This way, you’ll get the opportunity to tweak your marketing so it hits all the spots.

Trying to Do It All Yourself

This is pretty common for small business owners. You might not be a qualified marketer, but you can pick things up and piece it together, right?

And sure, there are times when the budget doesn’t stretch to bringing on board experts or outsourcing, but this isn’t as big a problem as thinking you need to do it all alone and not getting help when you should.

There are many online resources you can use — blog posts, YouTube videos, downloadable assets, etc., giving you the tips and tricks you need around strategies to use, content types, audience channels, etc., but on top of this, you still have a business to run.

And that’s the crux: there’s a difference between owning your strategy and doing every single step yourself.

You don’t need to outsource everything; you just need to know when the value of outside skill outweighs the cost of the learning curve of doing it yourself.

This is where getting expert insight or outsourcing certain parts of your marketing comes into play.

Pinpoint areas of your marketing where you’re not seeing results or where you don’t feel confident. And then outsource it. You might need to partner with a B2B email marketing agency, or you might want a company to handle influencer outreach or LLM, or GEO (generative engine optimization) to get featured in the likes of ChatGPT. But wherever you feel you would get more benefit from outsourcing, use it.

Falling Behind on Industry Trends

Marketing changes fast, and for the most part, small business owners are constantly trailing in its wake. This is for multiple reasons. Firstly, they are running a business, not focusing on marketing trends. Secondly, these changes can happen quickly, and they don’t always have the team, time, or resources to pivot at the drop of a hat.

And herein lies the issue: small business owners need to be aware of industry trends to capitalize on them when they come through, so it seems like somewhat of a catch-22 situation.

But what do you need to look out for? It’s changes like a new platform, new marketing techniques, or industry shifts, as well as changes in consumer demand.

Ideally, you want to have a way to be alerted to these changes before you get timed out of the shift, whether that’s monitoring competitors, getting industry news, signing up for emails, or following leaders’ social media accounts to get a head start on new changes and approaches within marketing for the best results.

Failing to Track and Measure Results

If you don’t set any KPIs, how can you tell what is and isn’t working? While it might feel enough to get your marketing strategy up and running, if you’ve not figured out how to track results, then nothing will work because you have nothing to compare against.

You need to set your KPIs before you construct your strategy, as these will dictate the marketing avenues you pursue and what activities you choose to undertake.

Whether you need to increase sales by a certain percentage by a set date, increase your email database, or improve retention, know this, understand it, and give definite goals to hit with timelines. This way, you won’t be wasting your marketing budget or throwing money into the wind and hoping something blows back.