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The weird and wonderful world of marketing can be complex – especially because it’s ever-changing. Although the core principles of business marketing remain unchanged, emerging technologies and changing consumer behaviours have meant that businesses’ growth strategies today look entirely different to those before them. Previously, businesses have seen success with offline marketing such as magazine advertising and door-to-door sales.
Today, in a digital-first era, businesses need to juggle website, email, content and social media marketing if they want to see real business growth. If that’s not enough to think about, business owners also need to decide whether they require an in-house marketing team compared to an agency. This decision is far from easy to make, particularly when there are an overwhelming number of specialist teams to choose from. The most popular agencies offer services in SEO and social media advertising, but more recently we’ve seen the rise of TikTok marketing agencies too. Sometimes in-house marketing teams are deemed the more suitable option, most commonly in businesses where product education is constantly changing or if they rely on flash sales and responsive PR.
If you’re a business with an in-house team or a marketer looking to improve your current strategy, here are three marketing habits to avoid.
Sticking With What’s Always Worked
In many organisations, especially those that have grown from startups to international business giants, their marketing strategies look almost identical from year to year. Of course there are a couple of changes, but it’s common for business owners to fear doing anything different with their strategies – primarily because what they’re already doing works. Even if you see huge success with your marketing strategy, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be refreshed and improved every year.
It’s no secret that embracing new marketing techniques can be costly, and it’s not guaranteed that you’ll see results quickly. But opening your strategies up to new ideas and potentially new markets can foster business opportunities that you never would have seen otherwise.
Choosing Instinct Over Data
Many marketers and business professionals agree that the key to great marketing starts with understanding data. It doesn’t matter if you’re not a natural copywriter or social media manager; as long as you can accurately read and evaluate marketing analytics, you can derive a strategy that will work. Even if you’re a professional with decades of experience in the industry, unfortunately, numbers will always outweigh your expertise, and the quicker you embrace this, the faster you will meet your marketing and growth targets.
The best thing about marketing today is that almost every popular platform or marketing tool is built with its own analytical dashboard. The closer you look at the performance of your marketing activities, the faster you can spot errors and make improvements.
Trying to Be In Too Many Places At Once
It’s easy for business owners and marketing teams to fall into the trap of trying to be everywhere at once. Each online platform is entirely different to the next, so choosing to be across all of them can cause your content to get lost or ignored, as it may not be tailored to the actual audiences of those platforms.
Instead of trying to attract new customers by joining a new online platform, focus on where your target audience already is, and the platforms that they regularly use. This way, you can create content that’s personal and valuable to an audience that is likely to use your business, instead of wasting marketing and budget on audiences who have no interest in what you offer. A common marketing method in line with this advice is the 3-3-3 rule. Businesses should focus on three core messages, three audience segments, and only three marketing channels.