The job isn’t over when the product design process is completed. Without a market to support the production and distribution of your new thing, all that effort and expense has largely been for nothing. For entrepreneurs that intend to go into business to sell their product themselves (rather than license the idea to established firms), this means you’re going to have to switch from your design and development hat to your marketing hat.
You don’t need to be a product marketing expert to succeed in business. There are people that can help you with that. However, you do need to have some degree of marketing savvy if you’re going to steer your fledgling company down the proper path towards sustainable profits. To that end, there are a number of frighteningly common marketing mistakes small businesses make. Here are six of the worst offenders, and what you can do to avoid them yourself.
1. Not Finding Time For Marketing
Running a small business is a lot of work. In the early days, free time isn’t something you can expect to have a lot of. There is a tendency for entrepreneurs to put marketing concerns on the back burner while they focus on “more critical” tasks like making sure that manufacturing is going according to plan or maintaining relationships with distributors. These kinds of things are certainly necessary and important. But the problem is that marketing is, too.
You need to find the proper balance that allows you to dedicate enough energy towards your marketing strategy that you can gain traction and build your brand recognition without losing track of all those other important things. One way to make this task easier is to incorporate marketing strategy into your weekly routine early on. It’s never too soon to start thinking about consumer engagement and building interest in your product. If you start this process early on, it’s easier to keep on maintaining it as your business grows.
You’re going to want to dedicate at least a few hours a week specifically to marketing. You can start small, but make sure that you commit this time to work on marketing. Use this time to develop your strategy, see what is working for you and what isn’t, and also spend some time learning about marketing. Entrepreneurial and business magazines are a good source, and Coursera has all kinds of free marketing courses.
If you really do find it impossible to put aside even a few hours a week to focus on marketing, then you’ll have to find some way of delegating. It has to be done. Delegate it employees, friends, or a professional if you have the budget to do so. Make sure that whoever you do assign the task is being compensated fairly so that they will do the work diligently.
2. Failing to Offer a Compelling Value Proposition
A value proposition, or a unique selling proposition, is the central and unifying statement that separates your product from the competition. If you don’t have one, then you need to create one. If you can’t create one, then you are in serious trouble.
Your value proposition should be expressible in one or two sentences, and it should be obvious to anyone who takes a look at your packaging or marketing material. It’s very difficult to succeed as a new business or with a new product if you cannot easily differentiate yourself from the competition. What is the unique thing which you are offering consumers that none of your competitors are that makes you a better choice?
You need to be able to offer customers something different, and they need to be able to immediately identify what that thing is. If you cannot meaningfully distinguish yourself from the competition, all that is left is competition based on price point. This is a race to the bottom, and it is a race which will almost always be won by the bigger, more established companies.
This central identifying characteristic can be features your product has. It can also be features of your business. If you have better customer service, faster delivery, better return policies, that can be the thing which sets you apart. The challenge with focusing on something like return policies or customer service is that you actually have to be able to offer the level of service you are offering. Everyone claims to have the best customer service, but almost nobody does. Usually, it’s having the better product that counts.
When you set out to design your product, there ought to have been a real-world problem that you aiming to solve. This makes the strongest value proposition for most new products: what does this thing do better than all the competing products? Why did you make the thing in the first place?
Make sure that this unique selling proposition is front and center on all of your marketing material. If you have a value proposition for your company as well as one for your product, ensure that all packaging and marketing pertaining to the product focuses primarily on the product. You want customers to be able to identify what your main selling point is within seconds of seeing your marketing material.
3. Not Keeping Records and Tracking Results
It’s very important for all businesses, whether they are new or established, to keep metrics and to track the results of their marketing activities. Google Analytics is a mandatory tool. If you aren’t tracking the results of your marketing decisions, there is no way to learn from your mistakes — or even to recognize when mistakes are made.
The flip side of this is that you also can’t recognize when something is working, or to what extent. As your business evolves, you will need to adapt your strategies (more on that later). You can’t effectively do this unless you are tracking your progress.
Tracking and record keeping is also essential if you’re going to make the most out of your marketing investments. If a certain strategy isn’t working, you should drop it. If a different strategy is working better than anticipated, you should reinforce it. You should be testing out various different marketing avenues, and without any form of tracking you will have no way of analyzing which are working and deserve more attention, and which are more of a drain on your resources than a benefit.
New businesses need to constantly be in the process of making predictions about what will be successful and then testing those predictions. This means metrics and tracking.
4. Failing to Pivot at Crucial Junctures
The term ‘pivot’ has become a bit of a hot-button in the startup and business world. Odds are, if you’re running a business, you’ve heard this term. But what does it mean?
Pivoting means adapting your business strategy to changing market conditions, while maintaining the core of your mission and value statement. As time goes on, the context in which your business operates will inevitably change. This can be the result of external factors, such as market fluctuations and the behavior of your competitors, or it can be the result of your own marketing activity or growth. The kinds of strategies that work for you when you are just getting off the ground won’t be as effective at later stages, and vice versa. You need to adapt.
So, pivoting can mean reorienting your business in response to shifting market conditions, or it can be part of your growth as you scale up to take on larger market shares. On the one hand, consumer tastes change over time, technology advances, and your competition will always be trying to outflank you. It’s important to recognize when these changes are happening, and to be willing and able to change your strategy once you’ve recognized that they are.
On the other hand, sometimes the need to pivot comes not from external challenges but rather as a byproduct of your own success. This is especially true for your marketing strategy. As your business grows, the kinds of tools that are effective for generating traction and increasing your customer base will change. So while slumping sales can be one indicator of the need to pivot, so too can a plateau or a de-acceleration of the growth of your customer base. When your outreach strategies start to become less effective, it’s a good time to consider how to scale up and move into a new stage in your marketing strategy in order to continue healthy levels of growth.
It’s very easy for entrepreneurs to get stuck in a rut and to become dogmatic about their strategy. It is a major mistake not to see the writing on the wall and know when to adapt your strategies to changing market conditions or to scale up your strategies to keep track with the size of your business.
5. Not Having a Website
It’s a little bit crazy to even have to mention this, but whatever you’re selling, it’s almost definitely a good idea for you to have a website. And yet, according to some estimates, roughly half of the small business in the U.S don’t have a website.
That’s pretty whacky. Most of the businesses without a dedicated website cited the opinion that a website would not be relevant to their business or industry.
That’s a big mistake. It doesn’t matter what you do: you need customers. And odds are that customers will try to find you using the Internet. And if they can’t, the Internet will gleefully show them to the websites of your competitors.
Your website doesn’t have to be complex or fancy, especially if you don’t intend to be using it to direct any sales. It can be as simple as a home page that lists up-to-date contact information. There are all kinds of inexpensive services that allow you to easily design and host decent looking, professional web pages at very little cost. There really is no excuse for not having a website these days.
6. Not Having a Marketing Plan
Like most things in life, it is difficult to run a successful marketing campaign without some sort of plan. Your overall business plan should include a marketing plan. Of course, this plan should be adaptive (see pivoting above), and should not be set in stone. But having a roadmap and some achievable goals is an important tool to help keep you on track and to give you a standard against which to measure your progress.
Your marketing strategy is an outline of how you intend to promote your brand and connect with consumers not just right now, but in the foreseeable future. You want to look ahead over the next two years, and consider how your business will grow and what your marketing strategy will be at each phase. Create a timeline for yourself, so that you are always working towards the next milestone. But again: don’t be afraid to make adjustments based on the metrics that you are tracking and change in the market.
Your marketing plan should lay out the following core features of your product:
- Your value statement: what real world problem is your product solving, and what sets it apart?
- Your price point: how much will your product sell for? What are your profit margins?
- Yor sales point: where and how will you sell your product? How will customers find you?
- Your promotion plan: how will you be getting the word out?
Running a business is hard work. Most small businesses don’t succeed. By avoiding these common mistakes, you greatly improve your chances of success.
You’ll also improve your chances of success by finding good help when you need it. Cad Crowd specializes in connecting entrepreneurs and innovators with talented, top-tier freelance CAD design and product development service. Let us know about your project. We’ll provide you with a free estimate, and connect you with a top-ranking designer with the skills you need. Get a free quote today!
