6 Common Advertising Mistakes Small Businesses Make and How to Avoid Them.

If you’re running a small business, then advertising is a must.

But like any form of marketing, there’s an important learning curve, and most small businesses tend to make the same mistakes.

Advertising brings visibility and draws attention to a business.

It’s so flexible, it can be used to reach an extremely large target audience or a very small, precisely defined market segment – in other words, your niche.

This makes advertising the most visible and one of the best marketing strategies any business.

And if you’re running a small business, then advertising is a must. You can design your ad messages to inform a large number of your potential customers on the benefits of your products or services – or better yet, your unique offer.

But like any form of marketing, there’s an important learning curve, and most small businesses tend to make the same mistakes.

So in this post, I’ll cover the 6 advertising mistakes you’re probably making and how to avoid them.

1. playing with mass marketing

Mass marketing is simply for large companies or startups.

These large companies use this kind of marketing to make people easily remember, desire and buy their products – and even to attract investors.

It involves running ads everywhere; on every radio and TV station, billboards, online; and as many times as possible. And also, a lot of PR and sales promotions, etc. – and it works.

However, the problem with mass marketing is that it’s very expensive. You’ll need a lot of time, money and teams of marketing people to successfully pull it off.

Besides, your small business doesn’t have the luxury to create awareness. What it needs is an advertising campaign that brings in enough leads that you can turn into customers.

I wrote blog posts on the basics of marketing for small businesses included.

2. trying to sell directly from your ads

It’s easy to see advertising as a way to make quick sales.

You air your ads, people see or hear it, they start coming into your store to buy or call to make some orders or reservations – and that’s it.

But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that for small businesses.

The fact is, only about 3% of those who see or hear your ads are really excited and ready to buy immediately – and that is if your ad is really good.

The rest, which is 97% will behave differently.

You’ll have 7% who are very open to buying and another 30% who are interested but not right now. And finally, 60% who are either not interested or wouldn’t take your product, even if it were free.

Now, this is where most small businesses make the mistake by copying what mass marketers do – ignore that 97%.

To avoid that, capture that 37% who are interested but not ready, in your follow-up database by placing a call-to-action in your ad to:

sign up to your newsletter.
follow you on social media
or join your SMS marketing group

And then, nurture them by building value for them, create a relationship built on trust and position yourself as an authority – so they’ll buy from you when they’re ready.

3. one ad for everyone and everything

Ads only work when your target audience can easily feel that your ad is directly talking to them.

It has to have the ability to set off your prospects’ emotional hot buttons and make them say, “Hey, that’s for me”.

But sadly, most small business ads fall flat; making no impression on their target audience.

The mistake begins from small business owners who think they can get more customers by trying to be all things to all people – they don’t want to focus on a niche market.

However, doing that makes it impossible for your ads to specifically speak to anyone.

Why?

Because different people need different messages to get them really excited to take an action.

Unfortunately, you’ll mostly see or hear these small businesses run one ad over and over again – just listing its services or products and that’s it.

They don’t have the budget to speak separately to the many different people they’re trying to serve and even worse, they don’t know who they want to speak to and how to speak to them.

4. one ad, many objectives

It can be really tempting sometimes to just jam everything into one ad and turn it into a ‘super ad’.

One ad that can help you get your name out there, let people know about your products or services, make sales and get people to follow up – all at the same time.

But that won’t do you any good.

Trying to use one ad to achieve many objectives only confuses your audience and makes it very difficult to understand:

what you’re trying to tell them
and what you want them to do.

The rule of thumb is one ad, one objective.

And if something in the ad isn’t helping you achieve that objective, then get rid of it. By trying to do too much, you’ll only end up achieving none of your objectives.

5. ads that lack personality

Are you planning to hire that same guy who made that popular jingle for your competitor?

Do you want your ad to sound and even look something like that ad? Or, you just want to look or sound normal?

The mistake many small businesses make is thinking that, if their ad sounds and look familiar, then it’ll be easier for people to pay attention and remember them.

Sadly, it rather does the opposite. People easily ignore ads that sound and look normal because they see it as boring.

What’s more, making your ads that way creates a perception that your business is just like the other businesses you’re trying to differentiate yourself from.

For your ad to stand out from the crowd and grab attention, you need a unique personality.

Your ads must be written as though you were talking directly to a single person – just like how I’m doing right now.

Let your authenticity, personality, and opinion run through your ads – people love that. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll respect you for being real and open.

Be yourself and bring out your personality in your ads and you’ll stand out in a sea of one-way ads.

6. ads with no offer

The average person is bombarded by more than 1000 ads a day.

And guess what? They ignore most of them.

The mistake most small business make is waste good money and opportunity by doing nothing other than just offering a:

business name,
business logo,
long list of products or services they offer,
claim of being the best quality, best service or best prices,
and then, just dropping their contact details for “more information”.

People are occupied by their daily routines and have things to do with their time.

To get them excited, your ad must contain a unique offer that’ll make them stop and pay attention.

Now, an offer doesn’t mean discounts. It’s basically anything of value to your target audience that’ll make them respond to your ad in the manner that you want them to.

Wrapping up

Advertising has always been a numbers game.

That’s the more you advertise, the more people remember and get interested in what you do.

But for a small business with a small budget, you don’t have the luxury to do advertising like how everybody does it.

You have to be strategic and precise; and it starts with paying proper and enough attention to marketing in your small business.