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4 Things To Avoid When Marketing Your New Business

There is something very desirable about starting your own business. Working for yourself can be a very rewarding experience. However, there are a lot of potential pitfalls that can make running a business very difficult, if not impossible.

Maybe one of the biggest problem areas for budding entrepreneurs is the area of marketing. They may know a lot about the business they are trying to start, but when it comes to promoting that business successfully, they are lost. Following, are some common problems to avoid, and although aimed at the start-up, these tips also apply to more established businesses.

1. Penny pinching the marketing budget.

You've probably heard the old cliché: You have to spend money to make money. Believe it. There are certainly inexpensive ways to promote nearly any business, but as a general rule, you really do get what you pay for when it comes to your marketing.

Your marketing efforts are essentially the public persona for your business. If you put forth a cheap image, then that is exactly how you will be perceived. Furthermore, if you put forth no image, spending no money on advertising, then you can count on your business falling into obscurity. The difference between Nike and Joe's Running Shoes isn't necessarily that Nike is a better product, but rather that you know who Nike is.

That isn't to suggest that you should simply throw money at your advertising until you go broke. Your marketing efforts should be focused and smart, but you should also plan on hiring professionals and spending the money to do the job right.

2. Neglecting your brand strategy.

This one is easy for new businesses to ignore because many people simply don't understand what brand strategy is. Your brand, simply put, is your company image. Your logo, your stationery, your ads, your store front, the look and feel of your products or the quality of your services, even the way you answer the phone - these things are all part of your brand. All of these elements add up to form the perceptions your customers have of you.

Before you even open your doors for business, you should have a brand strategy in mind. How will your products look? How will you market your products? How will you relate with your customers? This is something that goes way beyond simply having your talented nephew design a logo for you. It involves a "big picture" mentality. The money you spend having an ad agency help you to develop a brand strategy will benefit you greatly in the long run.

3. Instant gratification marketing

We live in a society of instant gratification. Everything should happen "right now." Even many of the ads we see are tailored to this mentality. "Limited time offer." "Buy now." " Sale ends soon."

From an advertising perspective, this instant gratification mindset can be deadly to your bank account. We want to place an ad and see immediate results. When that doesn't happen, there is a tendency to blame the ad. The message must be wrong. We must change to something else. And when the next ad also doesn't work, we drop it just as quickly and move on. And so on, and so on, until there is no more money to spend and nothing to show for it.

And the conclusion many business owners come to? Advertising doesn't work.

This is nonsense. Advertising works spectacularly well. It is what can make you choose one soft drink over another. It can make you want to drive a particular brand of car. Advertising can even convince you to become a walking billboard (how many company logos are on your clothes?).

What doesn't work is inconsistency and giving up. A successful advertising campaign is not one that brings a ton of customers to your door overnight. It is one that builds awareness of your company. It brings a ton of customers over the long run. Successful advertising creates public awareness, so that when your customers think of the products or services you offer, they think of you.

It took years of consistent advertising to make you think of one specific company for buying books online. The persistent use of a duck has made a certain brand of supplemental insurance nearly a household word. What these, and almost all successful businesses have in common is that they allowed their advertising campaigns the time to work.

4. Doing it all yourself.

Entrepreneurs like to tackle problems themselves. This is the exact spirit that makes them entrepreneurs in the first place. Yet, even the most devout do-it-yourselfer wouldn't think of representing herself in court, or repaving his parking lot, or rewiring the electrical system in the new building - unless one of those things happened to be their business.

Despite that, many business owners think that they can handle their marketing themselves. How hard can it be? Just write what you want to say ("come buy my stuff!") and put it in the paper, right? But if marketing a business were that easy, wouldn't the companies spending huge amounts of money with ad agencies have figured this out?

Marketing a business is a professional endeavor. There are companies out there who make it their specialty to know what is likely to work and what isn't. You may have the desire to buck the system and do something different, but there may very well be good reasons why "something different" is a bad idea. Here are some things to ask before you try the do-it-yourself approach to your advertising:

Do you know what makes some ads more appropriate for a newspaper versus a magazine?
Do you have the time to research what your competitors are doing?
Do you know how to buy radio time to ensure you get the best exposure for your message?
Do you know the limitations or advantages of the different advertising mediums (print, radio, TV)?

If you can't answer these questions, and dozens more, then you may wind up shooting your business in the foot and throwing money away on poor or ineffective advertising.

In fact, the last question you should ask yourself is, what is your time worth? You have a new business to run. Do you really have the time to devote to learn the ins and outs of marketing and advertising?

The bottom line is that most new businesses fail, and quite often is doesn't have a lot to do with the quality of service or product offered. In fact, it isn't unusual for an inferior business to succeed, while the better competitor fails, and the difference is often in the marketing and advertising. No one can guarantee success, but your chances are greatly increased once you stop thinking of advertising as an expense and begin to think of it as an investment.