Did you know that roughly 20% of businesses fail within their first year of operation?
That 30% of businesses fail by the end of their second year?
Or that nearly 50% of all businesses will fail by the end of their fifth year?
Unfortunately, while many business owners may know the ins and outs of the products or services they sell, they’re usually not as adept at marketing or promoting their brands online.
Below, we’re exploring some of the most common reasons business owners often fail to market themselves online successfully.
Not Knowing Your Competitive Positioning
If you don’t know who your competitors are or what they’re doing, how are you supposed to know what you can do to make yourself stand apart from everybody else?
Essentially, if you want people to buy from you, you’ll need to establish what’s known as a USP or a Unique Selling Proposition.
A USP or a Unique Selling Proposition is the one thing that makes your business and its products or services better than your competitors.
It can be hard to find what genuinely sets you apart from other similar businesses in highly competitive industries, such as finance or health.
However, defining your USP is crucial to successful marketing.
Note that unique logos and graphics are also important when it comes to successfully marketing yourself online. You can design custom logos and business graphics with Logo Creator. Check it out here: https://www.logocreator.io
Not Knowing Your Audience
Similar to competitive research, you’ll also need to research your target audience, which is, essentially, the people who are most likely to interact with your brand daily.
Knowing your audience will enable you to brainstorm better ways to market and promote your brand, for instance, by creating content that will resonate with your ideal customers.
The best way to learn about your target audience is to create a series of buyer personas.
These are fictionalized character outlines of your ideal customers that will often list as many personality traits, pain points, or demographic information as possible.
Essentially, the more you know about your audience, the more likely you’ll be able to come up with content and promotions that they’ll already be interested in from the start!
Not Planning Ahead
When it comes to the world of marketing and advertising, things can often change at the drop of a hat!
Consumer buying habits of constantly changing. Plus, new online platforms are always being launched and taken down, search engine algorithms and updates being developed and tested, and much more that goes on that could impact your marketing approach.
Therefore, business owners need to be proactive in constantly planning, not only for how they’ll market themselves this week, but next month, next year, and well into the future!
Future-proofing is a term that’s often being tossed around these days. And, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic causing thousands upon thousands of small businesses to go belly up, it’s easy to see why it’s more important than ever to plan for the future.
Not Listening To The Data Or Revising Your Approach
Data doesn’t lie!
When you use online tools and platforms for marketing your business online, you’ll usually have access to some form of data analytics or insights to help you track your overall performance.
Twitter Marketing Agencies recommends that you must regularly dive into your data to find out what isn’t working for your brand.
For instance, suppose that after looking at your analytics for the month, maybe you find that nobody is clicking through to your website.
By knowing this, you’d be able to deduce that maybe your content simply isn’t enticing enough, maybe your images are captivating enough, or that you’ve forgotten to include a clear CTA in your ads.
Either way, the lesson is that you need to routinely revise your data and adapt your marketing approach to what it’s telling you!
By Carroll Roney
