10 marketing mistakes made by startups and how to avoid them

Each year, millions of entrepreneurs start new businesses. They begin with excitement, passion and hope that they'll have a brighter journey in the Industry, but some of them fall. The reason might be cash flow problems, lack of industry insights, poor vision, bad partnerships, less experienced team and, of course, poor marketing mistakes startups usually make. Well, mistakes are important to learn something new and come up with something big, but repetition can lead to failures.

Some statistics on startup failures will help you understand how their marketing mistakes tossed them out of the startup landscape, and they ended up with no results.

• According to the Bureau of Labor, 2 out of 10 new businesses fail in the first year of operations.

• According to Forbes, 42% of the business fails due to unidentified market needs for their product.

• 75% of startups backed by venture capitalists fail.

• After ten years, only 35% of the startup will survive, said the Bureau of Labor.

• Around 14% of startups fail due to poor marketing.

Hopefully, these stats have given you a quick insight into the startup's scenarios. Well, whatever you've decided for your startup business, if you resolve marketing mistakes, then you'll be able to fulfill your desired dreams; otherwise, you'll have an equal contribution in the statistics mentioned above.

So, to help you avoid the mistakes, we've come with this article mentioning ten marketing mistakes startups usually make. This article will also shed some light on the ways to avoid those mistakes. So, read thoroughly and take one step ahead to your startup success.

No Marketing Vision

Clear vision should be the genesis of any startup firm. Remember the old saying, "when the vision is clear, strategy is easy" - Germany Kent.

So, the startups must have a strong vision for the market they are targeting so they can execute their plans to boost revenue and conversions. As long as your marketing efforts are true to achieve a great return on investment, the success will be yours. However, most of the startups lack understanding of it and end up with poor marketing results.

Solution: Prioritize your marketing goals for your startup firm, create a blueprint of what you want to achieve, and then act wisely on each of your marketing moves. Once you start working on your goals with a clear vision and direction in mind, your success is guaranteed.

Lack of focus on brand perfection

Without a focus on brand perfection, nothing can be achieved! Many startups each year start new businesses but don't succeed due to a lack of focus on brand perfection.

Another reason they fall in the race is they change their brand name after one or two years of launch. Though investing millions of dollars in a brand name in the early stage is not good, still choose it wisely as your website's success and entire business rely heavily on it. To put it plainly, if the focus is missing, how could you imagine success will be there?

Never!

However, if focus, discipline, planning, and approaches of development and releases such as ''Minimal Viable Product (MVP)'' are there, the success is assured. Don't consider any of the jobs in your startup firm, small or big; perform every marketing tip you can to boost your brand name.

Solution: Learn from the success stories of entrepreneurs and startup organizations. Realize how they faced challenges and exercised the unique marketing features, etc. Strengthen your decision-making, and don't stay away from the discipline.

Selection of wrong social media channels

How Startups can expand their reach with Social Media Marketing?What blocks your business to reach the next level? Wrong marketing strategies and, of course, selection of wrong social media channels that are booming excellently.

Though most startup owners choose social media channels wisely to promote their business, due to a lack of awareness of the importance of each channel and usage stats, they lose the opportunity to deliver their message to the right audience. It takes them away from success.

It's normal to get juggled up between different social media channels such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, but the wise selection can make a big difference so that you can target your audience correctly and post user-friendly & engaging content regularly.

Solution: Go through the functionalities of all the social media channels thoroughly. Think twice about your chosen channel and skyrocket your marketing efforts to boost conversions and revenue.

No analysis of traffic and conversion

One of the biggest mistakes that most firms make is not taking the analysis seriously. Most business ideas are based on assumptions, and that being said, "assumptions are dangerous things,". It swaps off all marketing dreams and ends up with no optimum results.

Let's understand better with a simplified example: suppose you're running an online clothing store, but you don't know what's the traffic and conversion update on your store. In simple words, you are unaware of your target market and audiences' reach toward your business. It's clear evidence; you're not considering traffic and conversion analysis on a serious note.

Until and unless you don't know how many people have liked your product and shown their interest in it, you won't be in a position to expand the sales funnel and hit the maximum revenue you planned for.

Solution: Use the Google analytics tool to understand where your business has arrived. From the analysis, you will search for the more lucrative marketing opportunities that can scale your business and engage more audiences.

No content engagement

“Content is king” - Bill Gates. The startup organizations that make no content engagement plans for their website's traffic corner themselves away from the victory. This marketing mistake costs them a dropped ranking in the startup competition. To win, they need to map a strategy for their content.

The content marketing strategy should be able to convert maximum visitors into a paying lead. It would be best to make it informative and engaging so that users can relate it with their pain points and make use of the services on your site.

Try to kickstart your content marketing strategy by creating stunning landing pages and blog sections that can impress the user's thoughts and ability to purchase. Also, as Google index quality content more rapidly, it will boost your website ranking as well. So, focus on content marketing as much as you can.

Solution:

• Craft a blueprint of what you want to write.
• Know your audience and write accordingly.
• Thoroughly analyze what your competitors are writing about. It can help you plan your content strategy.
• Write emails to the target audience to boost your product awareness.

Aimless hiring process for the marketing team

It's quite obvious that you need a team of marketing experts to grow your business, but it doesn't mean you randomly hire any of the people and hand over the responsibilities. Unfortunately, most startup firms, such as app development companies or investment-related financial institutes, make this mistake and face challenges.

However, to succeed and grow your business worldwide, choosing the right marketing team makes a great difference, and there should be no hurry and compromise in anything. If you choose the right team, which is highly productive and experienced, only then your startup business can thrive.

Solution: If you have a strong and clear vision, and have planned out the values for your business, then it would be a wise decision to prepare a list of the candidates you want to hire. Take interviews precisely and ask them all the desired questions you want so that you can ensure the candidate is the right fit for your company.

Late product launch

Many startup firms have their product ready to launch, but they don’t launch it. The reason behind this is that they don’t have marketing campaigns to coincide with the product launch. Most of the startup firms fall because they make the same mistake.

They don’t plan their marketing campaigns seasonally whenever they get time thus, resulting in late product launches. The result is that the competitors launch their product early and gain a great deal of profit and conversion. This is why it is important to have strategic marketing campaigns effectively considering all the coming product launches so that you can beat the competition.

Solution: Plan marketing campaigns parallelly when your launch is coming closer.

Inconsistency in marketing

Many startup firms believe that they have managed money, have analysed cash flow precisely and made marketing campaigns as per the product launch, but after a few days or months, they show no interest in their marketing.

In other words, they lack inconsistency in improving the brand’s identity, website visibility, and solid promotion that can skyrocket their sales funnel and help them achieve target goals. With inconsistency, they are even unable to dive deep into the marketing campaigns they have already invested in and, many times, spend money again.

Thus, it is to be concluded that startups must consider consistency in marketing to avoid investments on already running plans and stay updated to everything running in their marketing world.

Solution:

• Have a well-defined process and approach for your business objectives.
• Create a sheet of your daily or monthly tasks that you need to complete on priority.
• Utilize the money where it is most needed by implementing a bookkeeping process.
• Be consistent with everything you do, don’t skip any of the tasks that can impact your startup’s success.

Delay in marketing plans

The marketing of your business should allow people to pay for it without thinking twice. However, the majority of startup firms fail to grab that opportunity. The reason might be lack awareness of marketing trends and a vague idea of how their product sales can push their business to the next level or else they would blindly run their business with a sole aim to make the most of it but how? They truly don't know?

The marketing plan should help to attract customers. Target to attract ten customers to your business in the first instance, aim for 100 then, and finally, a wholesome target audience. When you show dedication, spirit and enthusiasm to boost your product reach to maximum users, only then you'll move to the path of a long-term & successful startup journey.

Solution: There are various advisors in the marketing world. Talk to some of the best and discuss your marketing ideas with them. Then, implement referrals, discount offering and other marketing strategies to draw more customers and skyrocket your product purchase.

Not partnering with non-competitive players

Last but not least. This mistake is something that also shakes up a startup's success. Saying no to partnering with non-competitors, startups lose the opportunity to strengthen relationships with the industry's leading marketing giant that can help them acquire new skills for effective operations.

Many entrepreneurs think of a startup as a game that can be played alone, but it's quite a challenging job in the business world that needs collaboration and healthy relationships. If you analyze the importance of partnerships, you'll eventually understand what you want to grab and fulfil.

Solutions: Analyze the market's leading non-competitors. Have a consultation with them to better your startup firm. It would be perfect if you start the process by consulting with the local non-competitors that can help you get a complete understanding of the local market, and you can implement your strategies accordingly.

Key takeaways

Raise your awareness of the above-listed marketing mistakes if you want to succeed. Startups nowadays no longer rely on the number of customers purchasing your product, but it also demands great brand visibility and credibility in the market. Though it takes time to see marketing strategies’ results, success is guaranteed when everything is done following the right plans. On top of all, one thing that can help you succeed and stay on top of your competitors is a positive attitude and guidance. If you're confident, positive and are surrounded by the right mentors and people, then you're turning your dreams into reality.

If you're planning to run a startup business, then avoiding mistakes can streamline your journey. Once you have selected the right marketing approach, considering all the important factors and parameters, your startup will scale quickly and sooner or later, you'll see your name in the list of top startup companies.

Stay tuned for more such articles.