Creating a solid and effective marketing strategy is essential for building brand awareness and driving business growth. With many businesses being pushed on time and resources, a marketing strategy needs to be void of mistakes. Unfortunately, errors within a marketing approach regularly rear their head, significantly hampering the effectiveness of the campaign.

Disruptor Media, specialists in creating bespoke marketing strategies that drive results, explore five common marketing strategy mistakes many businesses make.

Failing to identify target market/audience

Identifying a target market helps businesses develop effective marketing communication strategies. One of the key reasons businesses fail at marketing has been pinned on not clearly defining their target market and audience.

Different audiences require different marketing approaches. For example, if the target market of a business is youngsters aged 18 – 29, Facebook would be likely to be one of the most effective marketing forums within a campaign, due to the fact 82% of Facebook users are 18 to 29-year-olds.

Marketing campaigns that fail to identify target markets and plan marketing tactics around each demographic run the risk of being considerably less effectual.

Putting too much effort into big-budget marketing efforts

Businesses can tend to make the mistake of placing too much emphasis on marketing features that essentially drain the marketing budget and resources. Such features could include a business’ stand at an annual trade show or creating a glossy magazine.

Rather than placing substantial time, money and effort into such big-budget features, a marketing strategy is likely to prove more effective if it includes various stratagems designed to reach a broad audience as possible. The strategy should include a variety of channels, such as social media postings, blogs and email marketing campaigns.

The days when customers relied solely on trade shows and glossy magazines to gather information about a brand are well and truly over and modern marketing strategies should reflect the diversity of the digital consumer age.

Failing to track marketing results

Another big marketing strategy blunder is failing to track the results of such campaigns. Marketing planning is an iterative process. It can also be experimental, with some components of the campaign working better than others.

It is therefore essential that campaign results are monitored and tracked. By analysing the results of a campaign, businesses can see what’s working and what isn’t and craft proceeding marketing efforts around the positive elements of the campaign.

Underestimating the amount of work involved in a marketing campaign

For a marketing campaign to be effective, all aspects of the operation need to be carefully planned and budgeted for. A common mistake businesses have a tendency to make is to underestimate the amount of work involved.

A great marketing campaign requires work, a lot of work. An effective marketing strategy takes into consideration and appropriately plans the amount of work involved to execute the campaign to the optimum.

Rather than merely throwing marketing tasks to an in-house department that’s already squeezed for time doing daily tasks and hoping an ad-hoc marketing approach garners results, a quality marketing strategy plans every element.

From the initial stage of identifying target audiences to mapping keywords to be used in a content marketing strategy, to deciding which social media platforms would be most effective and how many posts to publish daily, a successful marketing strategy pinpoints and devotes a specific time and budget for every aspect of the campaign.

Failing to identify goals

What’s the aim of a business’s marketing efforts? Is it for the company’s director to be seen as an industry leader? Is it to drive conversions? Or is it to modify how a brand is perceived by customers?

All too often businesses fail to map out their marketing goals and objectives. By identifying this fundamental component of a marketing strategy, businesses are in a more solid position to put measurable KPIs in place.

 Get in contact with the Disruptor Media team today to help put your business on the road to marketing success.