Marketing is one of the key business aspects that cannot ignore regardless of the size of your company. According to statistics on Business 2 Community, businesses spend an average of 13% of their revenue on marketing alone. Marketing is the foundation of every business’s success. However, it’s not as easy as many people assume.

In fact, many entrepreneurs believe it’s the most challenging aspect of running a business. If you’re not keen, you’re bound to make some of the common marketing mistakes small businesses commit, like focusing on the wrong target, not tracking your marketing efforts, and failing to reassess budgets. Read on to learn more about the marketing challenges businesses–especially startups–face, and how to overcome them.

Insufficient Marketing Funds

Lack of resources is the primary obstacle today’s business owners face when marketing their brands. Many entrepreneurs have limited budgets for their advertising campaigns. So, they either choose to hire cheap marketers or handle the marketing process themselves. The downside of this approach is there’s a high probability of doing your marketing wrong. Even if you find detailed information about marketing, it’s hard to become a professional marketer in one day. Plus, you’ll be sacrificing many hours that you should invest in running core business functions.

Planning for business marketing before launching your brand is the first step to solving this issue. As a general rule of thumb, don’t launch a business thinking you won’t invest a single cent in marketing or that you’ll do it yourself. You need people and tools to accomplish your advertising goals. Therefore, develop your marketing strategy and create a budget in advance. You don’t need to set aside tens of thousands of dollars for marketing. A few hundred dollars is enough to help you hire the right marketing talent and tools to promote your brand successfully.

Finding The Right Marketing Solutions

The marketing ecosystem is always changing, along with consumer expectations. This means you need to use the right marketing tools and techniques to attract the attention of your target audience and retain customers. Note that a lack of effective and current solutions limits your ability to stand out from the crowd and make the most of your leads. With this in mind, commit time and effort to identifying tools that will support your marketing plan.

Must-have business marketing tools are customer relationship management or CRM software, project management solutions, analytics software, email marketing, and social media tools. Each tool plays a significant role in ensuring you accomplish your marketing objectives. For example, CRM software helps your marketing team track potential customers and learn more about them. Using the information they have gathered, your team can create a strategy to convert new leads into loyal customers. On the other hand, analytics software helps you keep track of your online ad campaigns automatically. That way, you can easily identify areas of improvement and reach a large audience.

Staying Up-to-Date with Trends

Whether you’re running a tech startup or retail store, you’ll notice rapid changes in the market. Not to mention, marketing trends and laws are always emerging, making it difficult for businesses to attract target customers and boost sales revenue. Ideally, marketing tactics that work today might cease to provide the best results tomorrow. It’s also worth noting, that failure to comply with marketing regulations can lead to serious legal problems.

To increase your chances of promoting your business successfully, you need to keep up with trends and practices. Following industry news is one way to stay up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and rules. You may also want to partner with a reputable marketing agency to ensure your ad campaigns meet the set requirements.

Improving Visibility And Generating Leads

Brand visibility is all about putting your company image in front of your prospects when they’re looking. If done right, brand visibility helps you generate quality leads. However, creating brand awareness is challenging because it requires actionable efforts. You’ll also face many obstacles in generating leads if you’re in a competitive industry. Fortunately, you can overcome issues revolving around brand visibility and lead generation. One of the most effective ways to boost your organization’s visibility is by working with expert marketers.

A professional marketer will not only help you create a marketing strategy but also choose the right advertising techniques. Typically, marketers will implement SEO, email marketing, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and offline marketing, such as print media and direct mail. According to clashgraphics.com, print media like glossy and uncoated brochures provide an opportunity for businesses to enhance communication with target customers and introduce them to their products and services. You can also use brochures, flyers, and posters to inform your audience about upcoming events. The key to succeeding in print media advertising is by hiring a printing service committed to helping you get noticed.

If you have skills in marketing and building sale funnels, and you understand your target audience well, you can utilize the service of web developers to build an appropriate landing page, and use paid traffic like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to collect leads. Generally, paid search traffic tends to work well when people are looking for a specific product or service (such as a mobile device or dental service), or when they are looking for a solution to a problem. The main disadvantage is the lack of control over demographics. The paid social traffic allows you to target the exact demographics of your audience, but you should understand most people are not actively looking for your product or service right now, so you can’t expect quick sales. With social traffic, you can lure people in with initial valuable content, collect their contact information, keep in touch with them all the time, and build trust so that they will start buying your products.

Selecting A Suitable Marketing Platform

Picking a business marketing platform can be challenging if you lack the skills of a marketer. For example, let’s say you’re starting a kids’ toy store. Where would you focus your marketing efforts to attract and keep customers? Chances are you don’t know which social media or offline marketing channel you will use to promote your brand. With so many marketing platforms available, choosing the most effective one can be overwhelming. But you can overcome this challenge by doing thorough research.

Invest time to identify social media platforms where your target audience spends most of their time. Then, create engaging content to connect with your prospects on their preferred social networks. If you want to advertise offline, find out the type of print media your potential clients interact with. While extensive research will help you gain more marketing experience, you must set aside a substantial amount of time to achieve the best outcome. If you have limited time for marketing, it’s wise to hire a marketing expert.

Marketing is the foundation of business growth and success. However, it’s one of the most challenging tasks business owners undertake. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll likely encounter financial problems when marketing. You’ll also have a hard time choosing a marketing channel, improving brand visibility, generating leads, and keeping up with trends. The good news is, that there are solutions to overcome these challenges.