It is quite common for small business owners to wonder when the investment being put into marketing would start paying off. After all, developing a website, implementing sustained SEO, as well as advertising campaigns on Google and a host of social media platforms can be quite costly, especially for entrepreneurs operating on a shoestring budget. However, most small businesses tend to continue to sink in precious money into unprofitable channels because they simply do not know that they are wasting their money and effort. The result is they end up spending money they could have used more productively. Some of the top ways in which entrepreneurs tend to waste their marketing money:

Making Logo and Brand Design Their Top Priority 

Often small business owners tend to equate their businesses to a logo and a brand and feel that without these two elements in place, their business does not have an existence. This is the reason why instead of focusing their energies on getting their business in order, they blow up an inordinate amount of money of hiring agencies or freelancers to design clever looking logos. Unfortunately, most of them do not realize that logo too just like the business itself needs to evolve as it grows, and getting obsessed over a particular design at a very early stage of the business is a mere wastage of money. The right way of designing a logo is to be clear about what the business is all about and what you want to project unambiguously. According to https://www.forbes.com, you should understand your brand completely before attempting to design a logo for your business and not the other way round.

Rushing into Building a Website can prove expensive - Eric Dalius Explains Why

While it is true that businesses do need to have a website, it is important to know that is a tool to achieve brand visibility and conversions. It is also not true that visitors will flock to your website just because you have one. Most users will not discover your website by chance. You will be able to profit from organic traffic to your website only if you have a clear strategy in place that encourages visitors once they arrive on your website to travel along the sales funnel to their final destination for the intended conversion and closure of the deal. This will require you to have a very clear sales and marketing strategy that you can implement on a functional site that does not need to have any fancy bells and whistles. According to Eric J Dalius, a very successful entrepreneur, all you need is a website that provides a good user experience, provides intuitive navigation to users, useful content, and easy conversion.

Not Having a Differentiated Social Media Strategy 

It is quite common for owners of small businesses to complain that they have invested significantly in social media marketing but have not been able to get the expected dividends. Generally, there are two principal reasons for this. Very often the social media marketing experts that entrepreneurs hire may not be able to carve out a distinct personality for your business. As a result, the image they tend to project seems awkward and unreal to customers who are then disinclined to trust you. Customers ignoring you mean only one thing – a complete loss of your marketing investment. The second reason why social media marketing is often unsuccessful is that people tend to think that all the platforms are the same and end up posting the same content on each of them. Because each of the social media networks has its own distinct identity and personality, a uniform content publishing strategy tends to look foolish, according to https://www.askpreeto.com/tips-by-eric-j-dalius-on-small-business-marketing-with-minimum-budget/. For example, how you post on Facebook needs to be distinctly different from what you do on Instagram, even if the content is essentially the same. This means that if you want your social media investment to pay off, you or the person you hire should be an expert in the nuances of that platform and its users. Rather than wasting your money on a generalist, you could even think of hiring a marketing specialist for each platform you want to be active on.

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Engaging in PPC without Having the Competence 

The simplicity of advertising through Google AdWords and Facebook Ads tends to mislead entrepreneurs to think that they can do it by themselves and save the expense of hiring a specialist marketer. However, what they do not know that while PPC seems to be superficially simple, it is a complex science. PPC experts usually need to spend a huge amount of time and effort to tweak the campaigns before they are optimized and can deliver the best results. Doing PPC by yourself without the needed expertise can usually be a hit or miss affair and you can end up wasting a lot of money before realizing that it is not working as you had expected. The smart thing to do is to define your budget and let an expert PPC professional take over the reins. Another common money-wasting technique is using a PPC campaign to drive traffic to a website that has no opportunities for conversion or trying to drive traffic to a brick and mortar store. The trick to an effective PPC campaign that delivers a high ROI is to ensure that the offer has a strong appeal, customers can understand and act on it quickly, and there is a follow-up strategy in place as well as a robust backend to handle the conversions.

Conclusion 

If you do not want to flush your investment in marketing and sales down the drain, you must conduct a breakeven analysis. Think about the total expenses you need to incur to conduct the exercise, including the cost of assets and manpower, and balance it against the income you think it will bring in and calculate the earnings you will generate from each customer. If you do not have these details, you should stay away from loosening your purse strings. Not thinking through the entire marketing process, including your ability to afford it is essential to not end up wasting your money.