Whether you are a new or established company, gaining new interest and customers for your business ventures through marketing and advertising is an extremely important. It is an unavoidable step you must take if you want to grow. However, marketing techniques and strategies are continually changing, and business professionals are always giving new advice and warnings to follow. Because of this, it is easy to get confused or make mistakes, especially for those first starting out. Let’s explore some of the most common ways people market their businesses, the mistakes associated with them, and how to avoid them.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a range of tasks used to help increase the amount of organic traffic that is sent to a website by improving the visibility of web pages or the rankings of the website search engine results page (SERPs).

A common mistake that people make with SEO is not giving it enough time to see the impact their actions have had on the traffic sent to a website after making changes according to your strategy. It is a process that requires time and patience as results are not often immediate, but instead gradually increase your reach over time. So, to avoid this mistake when utilizing SEO to market your business is to stay consistent, give it time, and don’t give up too quickly. The results will come and in the long term, your business will benefit and become stronger from having SEO work done to it.

Television

An old-school form of advertisement that has changed over the more recent years is TV advertisement and how businesses reach their target audience through the programs that people watch. Years ago, you would pay to run your adverts between or during the breaks of specific programs and times that would have your potential audience watching. For example, toys that appeal to kids would be shown in between their cartoons, whereas cars or holidays would be shown later at night when adults are more likely to be watching.

However, with the introduction of smart TVs and streaming platforms, fewer and fewer people have been watching live TV, and because of this, one common mistake is not switching how you can reach your potential customers. So instead of investing money into marketing yourself on live TV, instead look into how you can use CTV (connected television) advertising to your advantage and reach your desired target audience. Due to so much digital information available you can use tools such as CTV attribution to your advantage to deep dive into various statistics and allow you to adapt or create new marketing strategies.

Pay-Per-Click

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a form of instant online advertising where you lead customers to your website in a more direct way, as opposed to optimizing your website and growing organic traffic as you do with SEO. With PPC there is a cost involved every time someone clicks the link or image that brings them to your website, but this is often trivial compared to the potential sale that you could be making. For example, you might be charged £1 per click, but the potential sale of your item or services could be £100, leading to a large profit.

A mistake that is often made with PPC advertising is not having specific goals in mind and just placing adverts everywhere and anywhere. Businesses might think initially more leads equals more revenue, which is not incorrect, but there is a much more efficient way to do this, and will greatly increase your chances of a sale converting, subsequently boosting your profits. If you take a little time to research who it is that you are targeting with your advertising, and what specific sites they will most likely be visiting then your PPC success rate will increase.

Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool that anyone can use to market their business to new potential customers and clients because there are many benefits to using it. For example, it is free, a large portion of the world now uses social media every day, you can interact directly with your new customers and clients, it is generally free or cheap to use and there is a diverse range of ways you can market yourself on these platforms.

A common mistake that is often seen though is businesses using the wrong platforms to reach their target audience. So, before you put in a lot of time and effort into a platform that will not yield the returns that you invest, do some research into the platform, who uses it, and if there is a large enough audience on it for you to use as a viable option.

There are many more marketing mistakes to look out for in each of these, but this will get you on the right track.