The goal of every business is to make reasonable income on a regular basis. The way to achieve this is by providing goods or services to those who need them. In reaching out to those target customers, there is often need for publicity or marketing. This is what gives people a clear knowledge of what you have to offer, and your terms of offering them. There are several marketing techniques, but the approach that works best for your business is what you choose.
In making the choice of marketing structure that works best for micro businesses, the business owners often make wrong choices, or neglect some viable areas that can perfectly suits their business. Although some of this so called errors can help you make better choices, it is however better not to make mistakes at all. Here are some mistakes or omissions that micro business owners make.
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Trying to Sell to Everyone
One of the three basic economic questions you need to ask yourself when going into business is for whom to produce. Your target clients must be well spelt out before considering how to channel your marketing. Even when the scope of your business is wide, you still need to restrict your marketing to a defined range of people, so that you can use messaging and marketing approaches that will always reach them directly.
if you offer cleaning services for instance, it will be a waste of time marketing your services to university students, who will rarely need those services. Instead, you will want to concentrate efforts on offices, and property developers, for post-construction cleaning, and so on.
Failure to Define What Makes Your Business Different
While marketing your products / services, it is important to clearly state what makes your own product or service better than other ones. This difference can be in form of an improvement in quality, aesthetics, more attention to details, and so on. This is what attracts people patronize you. If you fail to clearly point out what makes your business different, you are not likely to get the kind of patronage you desire.
If every baker around you produces only strawberry-flavoured cake, you will need to introduce more flavours, and new designs. Presenting this while marketing will attract more clients because you have something unique to offer.
Ignoring Your Competitors
This actually translates to being ignorant of your competitors, or intentionally ignoring their creativity, uniqueness, and how they manage their clients. A clear knowledge of your competitors gives you an idea of what more you need to do. You will need to map out your competitor's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Identifying each of these factors in your line of business will give you insights into how you can beat the competition.
Underestimating the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing
This era of social media marketing, most learned micro business owners market their products and services online. It is however important to consider the word of mouth, especially when you have potential clients in the environment where your business is situated. In this case, you can make people market your product for you, by providing them with quality service, and telling them to inform their friends too.
Working Without A Marketing Plan
This is probably the most important point of all, or at least the first step. Having a marketing plan helps you to map out peculiar marketing technique for each group of potential clients. It also helps you to know which areas you have gained the attention of people, and where more work needs to be done.
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One other important error that some micro business owners make is "starting off with a high price." In the midst of competition, one major factor that attracts customers to your business is if they can get the same quality or service, or even better, at a cheaper price. If you consider this factor, you will use it to your advantage when marketing your business. When you have captured the right clients, prices can now be moderately adjusted to ensure that you're making commensurate profit on your services.
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