Advertising Mistakes You Can Fix

Small business owners are more likely to make more costly advertising mistakes than large corporations. The main reason for this is because as a small business you likely don’t have an advertising department and experts to help you navigate the ins and outs of advertising. You can avoid these mistakes simply by knowing about them and then not doing them.

8 Advertising Mistakes You Can Fix

1. Placing the Focus Elsewhere – The focus always needs to be on your audience, their problems, and how you can solve them. NOT on your products and/or services. They want to know what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you. Remember: benefits over features.
    
2. Being Unclear about the Audience – If you don’t know who your audience is, it will be hard to create the right advertisement. Create customer personas so that each time you write an advertisement or create a message, you know exactly who to direct it to.
    
3. Having a Weak Message – In order to create a strong message, you need to know your audience and the objective (action you want them to do), ensuring that you list the benefits along with your unique selling proposition. If you include some powerful words in simple but clear language, so much the better.
    
4. Not Sending Marketing Messages Often Enough – The frequency by which you choose to send advertising messages is important. Not often enough and they forget you exist; too often and you become a pest. You have to know your audience to know that fine line.
    
5. Avoiding a Call to Action – If you don’t give your audience something to do, they will likely do nothing. It’s important to know what your objective is before placing the advertisement so that you can form an effective CTA.
    
6. Not Using an Effective Landing Page – You can have a great product, a wonderful advertisement and then not convert people because your landing page isn’t effective. If you have a lot of click-throughs to the landing page but which aren't converting to customers, test different landing pages.
    
7. Misunderstanding the Metrics – A good example of what metrics can do for you is the point above. Try to understand what the numbers mean so that you can make a good choice of how to perfect the situation. If you’re not sure, talk to someone who is an expert.
    
8. Not Budgeting for Experts – You can’t do everything yourself and if advertising and sales isn’t in your expertise wheelhouse, you should contract with an expert to help you. If you already have your product or service ready, find someone who is used to marketing to your audience, and get their help.

Understanding that these are mistakes that many small businesses make with their advertising can help you not do the same thing. It’s important that you are aware of the types of things small businesses do that cause failure, or that cost a lot of money without any results. If you know better, you can do better.

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