Every business needs to invest money in marketing in order to attract new customers. However, many businesses can end up making big mistakes when it comes to how they market themselves and who they market to. Here are five mistakes to avoid when coming up with your next marketing campaign (and what you should do instead).

Doing no market research

You can’t promote your business if you don’t know who you’re promoting to. Market research can help you to develop a clear idea of who your customer is and their needs. There are so many ways to conduct market research – you can organise focus groups, conduct online surveys and make use of analytic data. This can all help you to identify the type of people that like your product so that you can focus your marketing towards them.

Having no USP

Every business needs a USP (unique selling point). This is what sets you apart from your competition – without it you’re unlikely to get noticed. Too many companies focus on chasing competition and trying to outdo them when they should be trying to set themselves apart. Once you’ve found your USP, you can make this the main angle of your marketing.

Failing to market offline

The internet has made marketing cheap and easy. Many companies now rely heavily on attracting new customers via their website and social media. However, in doing so, many companies overlook traditional offline marketing. Whist certain strategies such as cold calling and phonebook advertising are outdated, there are still many offline marketing strategies that are very effective. Events marketing is one example of this – through displays and interaction with people you can help to generate leads in a fun way that can’t be done online. You can also give people physical reminders such as business cards and flyers – something you also can’t do online.

Failing to market online

On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are many businesses that still haven’t embraced online marketing. Even if you own a physical store or a restaurants and you get most of your clients from people passing by your window, you can still make use of the web as an extra marketing tool. Having a website containing a map and contact details can help people to find you and book reservations. Social media meanwhile can be a useful tool for advertising deals, hosting competitions and sharing company news.

Focusing solely on new customers

As important as it is to attract new customers, you also need to be keeping your existing customers loyal as well winning back old customers. There are lots of ways to get customers returning such as setting up loyalty discounts and keeping existing customers updated via email/SMS