It's no secret that marketing is one of a business owner's best friend when making sales. However, as an entrepreneur and marketer, there are a few things you should know to avoid any future heartbreak and loss of money.
Let's get started.
Spending thousands of dollars for Facebook fan page likes
Sure, Facebook is one of the most powerful social network platforms today. If you have a lot of followers, you can publish a post and thousands of people will see it. However, almost every one of the social networks today restricts your reach, so you have no choice but to spend money on advertisements.
If you are a business trying to gain sales, you can try to use Facebook ads to reach your target audience. And if you are thinking of outsmarting Facebook and growing your fan page by spending money on Facebook fan page likes, it's best you don't.
This doesn't mean that you should not spend any money for ads, the advice is that you should avoid spending any money to build up one community.
Think about this for a second. When you spend money to build a community, it's not that effective when it comes to reaching your target audience. Why? You can't control if your followers will see your message or not.
This is probably one of the biggest marketing mistakes you can do. Social networks continuously change their algorithms, so your reach is usually restricted.
Here are a few tips for you. First, spend your money only on ads only if you can ensure that the cash flow will be positive. Getting an indirect ROI on your ad dollars seems a bit silly unless you want to take the risk and lose some money.
The second one is to be cautious. Start small and when you see the numbers working out, scale it up.
Picking a very small niche
The second mistake you might do is to choose a very small niche or total addressable market (TAM).
No matter how big or small a market is, it can be quite hard to own 100% of it. It's easier to own 1% so it would be logical to go after the 1% of a huge market right?
You've probably heard everybody saying how important it is to pick a niche. But not everyone will tell you that the effort to market a business in a small niche and a big niche is the same. So why not go for it and go after the big market? You'll even make more money.
You can use Google Trends, CrunchBase and Publicly traded companies to check if the market you've chosen is larger enough.
For Google Trends, type in the niche you are going for. Then look for the verticals that are bigger than your choice as a rule of thumb. Next, you can utilize CrunchBase to check if there's any venture funded competitors. If you find that someone raised more than 10 million dollars, it's already a big enough market.
Publicly traded companies, on the other hand, will help you check who your competitors are and see their market cap. The bigger your number, the better it is. Just keep in mind that most of the publicly traded companies provide several products and services, so the number is most often inflated.
Not all search traffic is the same
When you are doing your keyword research, and using competitive analysis tools such as SEMrush, you create content that can generate traffic for your target keywords. However, it is essential to also look at your regions. Each region provides different traffic revenue. Traffic from Brazil might result in a lower income compared to the United States. As such, it is essential to focus your efforts on your target region.
Also Read: 5 Fast Ways To Get Traffic For A New Website
Traffic is useless if it does not convert
The real formula when it comes to marketing is not only about who has the most traffic. It's about focusing more on the monetization.
Focus more on the conversion optimization rather than your traffic acquisition. Compared to Google Adwords, and SEO, in general, produces a higher ROI for your business.
Not monetizing earlier
When it comes to monetizing, it's not always good to provide freebies. Your users will only be expecting free stuff from you in the future. Stop waiting too long before you start monetizing. Charge for a service or a product. If you keep waiting for the "right time," people will think that your stuff will always be free. And by the time you do monetize, it will not convert just as much.
Don't take people for granted
People working for you can help you scale faster. You might want to hire skilled managers and operators for your site for faster growth.
Hire people who know the operations well and are process oriented. They will help your business grow fast. Teams help create great businesses and not single individuals. You can also ask for the help of bloggers and influencers in your industry and learn how to get a blogger to promote your product.
Control your destiny
For every time you ranked on page 1 of a search engine, it is essential for you to know that these won't last forever. For one reason or another, your site will stop ranking, and your income will go down.
There would be times when things will go wrong even if you did all the right things. As such, it is essential that you have an omnichannel approach when it comes to marketing. Don't rely on only one traffic channel. Use podcasts, videos, texts, and even free tools.
Expect that there will be a lot of ups and downs during your marketing period so if you want to make the most of your business, it's best to diversify your marketing. Don't stick to only one channel.
In case you make a mistake, that's alright. Mistakes will help you to become better. Learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Learn from the failures of others and your own. Follow the tips mentioned above and grow your business.
