5 Marketing Mistakes That are Hurting Your Bottom Line

When you’re looking for a way to get better results from your marketing strategy, a good place to start is by analyzing what you’re already doing. Before you start adding new channels or modifying your creative, first understand what’s working, what’s not, and why the changes you’re headed towards are the way to go. And while you’re doing that, keep an eye out for these five marketing mistakes.

Are any of these common mistakes standing in the way of your marketing success?

Marketing Mistake #1: Forgetting Your Target Audience

Every marketing decision should be data-driven with a focus on your target audience. Remember that your marketing is not about you and it’s not about the entire universe of consumers. It’s about your customers and prospects—the people you’re trying to reach to achieve your marketing objectives.

Your target audience should drive every aspect of your marketing strategy, from initial planning to creative executions and everything in between. It’s impossible to set realistic, attainable marketing goals or make strategic decisions without a clear understanding of who you’re targeting, where they are, what media channels they use, when, and how… Every layer of detail you can add to your knowledge of your target audience will guide you in setting clear objectives.

Be sure to keep your research up to date. If you develop a solid target persona at first but then forget about your target audience over time, your message may no longer be relevant to them.

Marketing Mistake #2: Not Tracking Results

Tracking marketing results goes hand in hand with keeping your target audience in mind. If you don’t set and monitor goals consistently, there is no way to know if your marketing strategy is effective.

Are you wasting marketing dollars on tactics that aren’t delivering, or a media channel that your target audience doesn’t use? By tracking results, you can make adjustments when necessary to improve your marketing ROI.

Marketing Mistake #3: Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

It’s important to get your marketing mix right and not rely too heavily on any one channel. While digital marketing has proven results, it shouldn’t be the only tool in your arsenal. Traditional advertising tactics like TV and radio have a solid track record of reach, trust, and influence on consumer research and purchase decisions, but they shouldn’t be isolated either.

According to a recent study by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), integrated campaigns are, on average, 57% more effective than those that aren’t unified across channels, and brands can increase ROI 19% by increasing from one media platform to two. In fact, adding platforms continues to build return, with five platforms increasing ROI by 35% over using only one. But the ARF also found that 29% of campaigns relied on just one medium, and 60% relied on two or fewer!

Marketing Mistake #4: Cutting Your Marketing Budget

Reducing your marketing budget may be a tempting solution to cut costs. However, there is plenty of evidence that indicates cutting marketing dollars negatively impacts businesses over the long haul, even during a down economy when consumers are spending less money. Yet the ARF study mentioned above suggests businesses are collectively under-spending by $31 billion each year. That’s a lot of room for improvement.

Marketing Mistake #5: Going it Alone

Trying to do everything yourself could be hurting your ultimate marketing success. Working with a professional media partner who has the right tools and resources will make developing a strategy (and sticking to it) easier. A professional media partner can add to your marketing department’s resources, so your internal team has more time to focus on the customer experience.

If any of the marketing mistakes above sound a little too familiar, don’t feel guilty—mistakes happen, and these are some common ones. But if you can acknowledge that they are hurting your bottom line, you can correct your marketing course and make changes to improve your results.