What are the most common marketing mistakes startups make?

I think that the first mistake is to ignore the real market need: is there a genuine market need for the product or service? Is there a need in (besides yourself)? How many customers belong to the target group and is the target group big enough? And finally: are the customers really ready to pay for the service or not? Everything else is pointless until these things are sorted out.

It's common for founders to prioritize product development over market validation and then market that invalidated solution. However, this approach can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities if the product doesn't meet the needs of the target audience. It's important to first check if there is a real demand for the product before investing significant time and resources into creating a polished end product.

My advice would be to start small - go after the smallest segment of prospects that you know better than anyone else out there. Use your understanding of the needs, pain points, decision criteria and preferences of this narrowest of segments (that you know extremely well) to define your marketing campaigns, your sales approach and your product features. This is the exact opposite of what most start up companies do. Don't try to win half a percent market share of the entire universe, win 50% market share of the segment that you know better than anyone else out there.

The cold email blast to a loosely defined target audience is hurting your brand. The recipient feels jilted when they realize they are just another email in your CRM. Instead, curate the list of your audience very carefully, even manually, and you’ll notice the response rate will be very high. To achieve this, imagine email isn’t free. That every email sent costs you $100

The #1 mistake marketers make is simply #NotStarting. This emphasizes the critical importance of taking action in the field of marketing. Here are several key, supporting points: Procrastination: Many aspiring marketers delay their marketing efforts out of fear, uncertainty, or a desire for perfection. However, this hesitation often leads to missed opportunities and stagnant growth. Momentum: Marketing campaigns can take time to gain momentum and yield results. Not starting means delaying the potential benefits of increased brand visibility, customer engagement, and revenue. Success in marketing often begins with taking that initial step, learning from the journey, and continuously adapting strategies to achieve better results.

Agree. Far too often the desire is to try and tackle so much. You end up diluting the work and spending yourself too thin. Set focused goals and stick to them.

Some companies set unrealistic goals especially at the start when you still have your full budget. Poor planning causes by no direction will lead to misappropriation of funds and waste of resources. See benchmark data as well to see if your goals are attainable.

I see a lot of Startups create assumptions based on these fallacies: (1) "We only need X% market share to be successful.." There's a large gap that needs to be closed going from the Startup phase to obtaining significant market share. Want to determine how strong the Founder(s)' thinking is? Look at (a) the marketing budget - what assumptions went into it? The assumptions are much more important than the outputs in the forecast (ie. the numbers),(b) watch for copy and pasted formulas based on X% growth per year across marketing activities, channels - growth is rarely linear. (2) The GTM builds Lead Gen in as a key goal instead of prioritizing iteration and learning during the first 2-3 months.

One thing people miss is not finding where their target audience hangs out. Your whole marketing is 1. Figuring out where your audience hangs out 2. Reaching out to them.

A checklist for startups on setting SMART goals : S (specific): What do you want to do ? - Be as detailed as possible M (measurable): How will you track your progress ? - Define criteria that you will use to decide whether you’ve met your goal A (achievable): How will you do it ? Do you have the right skills and resources ? - Needs to be challenging but also realistic R (relevant): Does the goal align with your team/organization ? - Think of your long term vision T (time-bound): What is the deadline for accomplishing the goal ? - Set a definite deadline.

Startups often make common marketing mistakes by not testing and optimizing their marketing channels, such as email, social media, blogs, and podcasts. To avoid this, startups should use analytics tools, A/B testing, and feedback surveys to measure and improve their marketing channel performance.

A/b testing and event tracking are so beneficial for start ups and can really help define your strategy with simple yet effective maneuvers. In addition content optimization (I.e look at your top performing pieces and see what slight modifications you can make to draw even higher traffic or get the desired result you want.

One big mistake I see is start-ups trying to invest in all channels, with the execution being poor (messaging, content strategy, graphics etc). This results in negative bias towards certain channels in the future - they might have been “done” but have they been “done well”. Another key misstep is focussing too heavily on demand generation, without having the basics in place or any kind of brand awareness/credibility. Start with the basics. You cannot expect a podcast to hit the charts and contribute to pipeline if you don’t even understand your ICP/personas first.

When it comes to marketing everything should be approached as a test. If something isn't working, you need to tweak it or change it. Maybe it's the copywriting, or the photo in the ad, or the target you are going after. But just always keep in mind that you need to test and tweak until you find what works. When you find a campaign or a channel that works, 2x, 5x, or 10x and rinse and repeat. This is how you can grow quite quickly.

Actions that can help startups avoid this mistake : 1. Measure your results : Use analytical tools to monitor the performance of campaigns. Without tracking and measuring marketing efforts, it can be difficult to know what is working and what is not. 2. Look for Customer’s Feedback: Customer feedback is a valuable source of information. Actively seeking for customers input leads to better product - market fit and opportunities for improvement.

I cant tell you how many times I have been on a great looking website only to see that the company has either hidden their contact details, made it difficult to find them or do not put them anywhere on the website. add linked in, instagram, certifications, emails, phone and make sure you put on testimonials .. there is nothing better than having someone else say how great you are!

Look how you can take a valuable piece of content and carve it up across as many channels as possible. Leverage content and reuse it. Drives a consistent message across all your channels.

If they’re very new they can often overestimate the impact that piece of content will have. You can have a logical and evidence-based argument for buying your goods and services but before it has impact you have to get it to the reader; even if that reader is well-targeted the easiest and most likely reaction is “That’s nice…” and they move on to the next thing without buying. I’ve media trained people who’ve thought their service should apply to everyone and be an easy sell. Their faces fell when I pointed out that even the massive supermarkets have to decide exactly which demographic they’re targeting, and food is a universal need.

This part would benefit from defining what's meant with content. Digital content is definitely not needed for every product. There are product and services where people have absolutely no need to read content. Eg most FMCG.

Content is the heart and soul of any communication. Moderating platform wise content and understanding what clicks with the customer is one of the most important role of the marketing manager.

88% of consumers read reviews to determine if a business is dedicated to providing a positive experience to their customers and if they truly value them. Even bad reviews are better than now reviews at all. Customers are more likely to buy from you if they see that you respond and act upon negative reviews.

Always ask for reviews after completing a service! So many of us don't ask. I send a lovely email to the client, thanking them for choosing to work with me and then ASKING for a review. I give them the Google link to leave it on and then ask if they would copy/paste it to FB - again giving them the link. I use reviews as social proof on so many things - you can make them into social media graphics and posts, use them on your website and sales pages and direct people directly to read more on your Google Business Profile if you want to. There's nothing like using your ideal clients credibility to show what a great job you do.

I've found generating referrals and positive reviews to be an incredibly powerful tool across the businesses I've worked with. My 'playbook' for generating positive reviews is as follows: 1) Build periodic customer surveys into the Customer Success and Retention function. Be mindful of frequency! As a general principle, I only deploy surveys if I am prepared to respond in an actionable fashion to the feedback. 2) Using automation, segment the feedback into 3 buckets: (1) Not Satisfied, (2) Satisfied, and (3) Satisfied+. 3) Bucket # 1 gets further pro-active support and Bucket #3 get your 'ask' (in this case, an online review). How is this approach different? It identifies those people who are brand fans to take share their experience.

60% of the time, when I test messaging for a client, the social proof ad wins over any other one. This is true B2B, B2C, B2E, any of 'em. The old saying is true: people buy from people. When your clients tell you something about why they love you, they're also telling you how to convince people like them to buy from you. Listen to them.

You can talk to you are blue in the face about how great your company is, but 1 testimonial from a trusted source is 10x more valuable. Make sure you are energizing and encouraging your clients to talk about you, your products and your services, and ask them if you can use those kind words in a lot of places to take full advantage.

As per my observation so far neglecting marketing ROI analysis is a common mistake startup make. It leads to inefficient spending, missed insights, and resource wastage. Startups may struggle to scale and face competitive disadvantages without data-driven decisions. Additionally, securing funding becomes harder, hindering growth potential. To thrive, startups must prioritize ROI tracking for informed and efficient marketing strategies.

This is incredibly important. At a startup, you need to be driving bottom-line impact. Things like Click-through-ratio and engagement are nice, but you need to be creating leads and more importantly leads that convert. Thus, you and sales need to be in lockstep on messaging, timing, offers, feedback and execution to ensure success.

It makes my blood boil the amount of times I hear of startups spending a lot of money on service businesses before trying to break ground themselves. Speaking from my own personal experience - I was quoted £10k a month for a PR agency to *maybe* push out 2-3 articles a month and £250k for three months of a famous social media agency to deliver 12 videos a month of 4 generic influencers... By diving into this myself I still managed to secure amazing PR coverage and also understood the social media advertising and influencer engagement to be able to understand, in detail, next time I would have those conversations. With the knowledge that I could at least manage the start of it myself with some authority.

One of the most common mistakes that new service-based business owners make is to rely on the client to tell them what they want to buy. It's actually up to the business owner (as the expert) to provide solutions and guide potential clients to the service that will best match their wants and solve the pain point they are struggling with. The best place to start, is with target market research to identify the pain point that your clients most want to solve. Then, designing a service or a suite of services that solve that pain point in a faster and easier way than if they were trying to solve it on their own.

Another mistake is not setting a marketing budget. Most startups do not consider marketing as a necessary expense. There should be one person that understands digital marketing terminology and metrics to ensure that any money spent on marketing is well spent. Too many times businesses pay too much money for services that they don’t need at that stage of maturity in the business.

Paying for a typical google or social media ad marketing campaign, especially if you're B2B. You'll need a pro, who will eat up valuable limited resources. That money would be better spent developing content that helps to establish you as an expert/problem solver in your area, building social trust through webinars/speaking opportunities with noted experts, and identifying and connecting with potential customers and partners focused initially on customer discovery/learning about their problems and better understanding how to meet their needs and who is a viable customer. This work is slow, but it's unavoidable as it requires human interaction to get that first and then next few customers.

Getting drunk on their own Kool-Aid and becoming too cultish and internally-focused. This happens when start up leaders fail to listen to, respect, and act on outside feedback, especially those of customers, but also business partners, analysts, advisors, even friends and family members.