If you don’t want to waste your small business marketing resources, avoid three major causes of such waste and improve your odds of business success. The three major causes are:

1. Failing to conduct small business marketing research.

2. Not identifying the people most inclined to buy your products or services.

3. Failing to create a small business marketing plan to guide your business.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 1: Not Utilizing Small Business Marketing Research.

Some small business owners think they can’t afford to research their target market, competition and product development. But if you desire to be successful, you can’t afford not to.

Failing to gather the information that this research provides, forces you to base marketing on inaccurate or incomplete data and increases the odds that you will waste your marketing efforts.

Without this research, you will be more inclined to build a marketing program that lacks focus. Research provides the groundwork to build a strategic marketing plan, to assure that every marketing tactic contributes to your marketing and business goals, and to attract your best potential customers.

A little money spent on research upfront can assure that your marketing to the right people and in the right way to be most successful. In fact, your target market is so important that it is covered as the second of the three major ways that small business owners waste their marketing resources.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 2: Not Identifying The People Most Inclined To Buy Your Products Or Services.

Business owners who don’t do research often don’t know the best target market for their products and services. Because they don’t determine who is most likely to buy their products, they market to everybody, and often don’t sell much to anybody. This type of small business marketing wastes marketing resources.

Many small business owners believe that everybody will want to buy what they sell, but that is seldom the case. This mistake wastes resources marketing to people who will never buy. Not only that, but failing to target the people most likely to buy, may actually alienate those who would otherwise become loyal customers.

What you spend upfront to gather information on your target market, will more than return your investment in increased sales. Plus, it will save you from wasting your marketing resources on strategies and tactics that don’t work effectively with your target market members.

With target market research, you’ll also be able to:

focus on your best potential customers,

gather vital information about this target market, and

plan at least seven marketing efforts that you will deliver each year to your target market.

By conducting target market research, you’ll discover much about:

those who are your best potential customers,

the best media to reach your target market members,

their information needs and effective appeals to include in marketing messages,

their spending power and the best price-point for your product or service.

Including this information in a small business marketing plan, will greatly improve return on marketing investments.

Small Business Marketing Mistake 3: Not Creating And Following A Small Business Marketing Plan

The third mistake is a result of the first two mistakes. Until you have done research on your product, competition and target market, you can’t plan the best way to spend your small business marketing resources. When you haven’t planned how to best spend your marketing resources, you can be persuaded to spend ineffectively.

Some small business owners believe that the only reason to complete a business plan is because banks require them for business loans. They fail to recognize the value of a business plan to guide their business, much less a marketing plan to guide their marketing.

If you don’t predetermine your marketing strategies and tactics, you may be tempted to buy into every marketing and advertising sales pitch. You, not external sales people, must be in charge of your small business marketing plan.

Many sales people play on the small business owner’s lack of marketing planning in order to sell marketing and advertising that do not move the business closer to its goals. A well-developed small business marketing plan is the best defense against sales people who will waste the business owners marketing resources in order to meet their own sales goals.

Some mass media sales people approach new business owners, convincing them to buy advertisements that primarily reach the wrong people, and sometimes reach few people because of the time or placement of the advertisement.

Likewise, without a marketing plan, you may be persuaded to buy marketing services and products that aren’t right for your target market. Every penny that you spend on effective marketing is a penny that you no longer have to spend on effective marketing.

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