Starting a business is a thrilling journey. Whilst growing and establishing a new business, your journey will be filled with new experiences and valuable lessons. Along this journey, as entrepreneurs, we are destined to make mistakes. And, that's perfectly okay. We all make mistakes while doing something new and these mistakes are a crucial part of the learning process. Mistakes help us to grow better and stronger and gives us the courage to stand again after failing several times. However, some mistakes can be costlier than you can afford, potentially putting your business at risk within the first three critical years.
Let’s walk through the common business marketing pitfalls and how you can avoid them to turbocharge your business and embrace success - both personally and professionally!
1. Being Oblivious About Significant and Relevant Market Changes
As you take those initial steps towards business growth and scaling, it's crucial to research well on the ever-evolving business landscape. You can gain the confidence to expand and move forward by doing thorough market research. Adapting to market trends allows you to break through barriers more effectively, scale your operations and turbocharge your business. Also, it can be your key to long-term sustainability and profitability.
Moreover, market research can also help you to identify niche markets that are brimming with opportunities. Niche markets require that you tailor your products and services to fulfil specific needs within the niche audience that you will want to serve to grow a successful business. Look out for niche market opportunities the next time you are doing market research for a new product or service.
On the flip side, if you fail to keep up with market changes, it will not only hinder your business's growth but also push you toward losses and potential failure. It can lead to stagnation and missed opportunities, which you definitely want to avoid to strengthen your standing in the business landscape.
What Can You Do?
To avoid this pitfall, dive into in-depth market research and stay informed about current industry trends. This knowledge will enable you to navigate modern business challenges and technological advancements and make business decisions with confidence. Moreover, you will be able to cater to evolving consumer preferences and respond to global events to make your brand more recognised and turbocharge your business. When looking at evolving consumer preferences, observe such preferences from a demographic and psychographic point of view. That will give you a holistic understanding of consumer needs & wants and provide a blueprint to satisfy the consumer’s needs through your products/service. In this way, you can make sure that your business doesn't fall into the same traps that have destroyed many others.
2. Underestimating the Significance of Knowing Your Avatar Inside-Out
Business branding isn't just about being recognised by everyone. It's about knowing that your business isn't for everyone. Every business has a specific target audience. And, recognising your target avatars is a crucial step in your business branding journey. Failing to identify your target avatar can be a costly mistake that hinders your business growth and leads to failure.
To fully understand your target avatar(target audience/target customer), you need to analyse them from a demographic and psychographic point of view. Demographic attributes include attributes like age, gender orientation, educational status, media consumption habits, social media platform engagement patterns etc. Psychographic attributes include aspects like attitudes, values, personality traits, decision making process etc. When you layer both the demographic and psychographic attributes together, you get a fuller picture of your target avatar, thereby helping you to better understand their needs and fulfil those needs through your business.
What Can You Do?
Understanding your target audience and their interests is important to develop a strong and effective marketing strategy that can turbocharge your business 10x. You can start with market research to identify and learn more about your audience and dig deeper into psychographic and behavioural data to gain insights into your target avatars. To have profound knowledge and present and future growth potentials, you can analyse existing customer data and feedback and get a better understanding of their needs, preferences and pain points.
In the world of business, mistakes are common and there is nothing to fear as long as they are not fatal. All you have to do is stay vigilant, adapt to market changes and understand your audience in order to steer clear of the common pitfalls and pave your way to thrive and succeed. Just remember, learning from mistakes is necessary for growth and success, but avoiding costly ones is crucial to never lose your ground.
3. Neglecting the Emotional Needs of Your Target Avatars
In the fast-forwarding business landscape, when you establish an emotional connection with your customers, trust and loyalty naturally come along. So, if you overlook your customers' emotional needs and fail to forge an unwavering bond, you're bound to struggle to gain their trust. But, don’t worry! With the right approach, you will be able to build an emotional connection and make them loyal to your business.
What Can You Do?
To navigate this emotional connection with your avatar, you have to first start by diving into their preferences, values, desires and the challenges they face in their daily life. By understanding the emotional tensions they are constantly experiencing, you can forge a strong and lasting connection with your customers.
Empathy is an excellent enabler to connect with your audience. Feel their pain points, understand their struggles and integrate it into your unique selling promise (USP). You need to shape your marketing strategies to meet the unique emotional needs of different segments within your target avatars. Also, embrace the power of storytelling and positive messaging and paint a picture that resonates with their hearts and minds to evoke positive emotions. This approach will let your customers feel like they're not just buying a product or service, they're becoming part of an inspiring story. By tapping into the emotional needs of your audience, it will be much easier for you to transform them into devoted advocates of your brand.
So, where do you go from here?
Now you know the 3 common pitfalls that you must avoid to scale, grow and turbocharge your business. Are you still hesitating to take action and expand your business? I am George Eapen, your marketing and branding coach at Next Dimension Story, presenting 10x growth brand marketing and sales online course to help entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses master the core skills to find the target avatar, regardless of the category and business vertical, map out the clusters of target customers, identify customers' emotive needs and resolve their emotional tension. I have almost two decades of experience in crafting, communicating and providing multiple marketing messages, campaigns and growth strategies for globally recognised brands like Procter & Gamble(R), PepsiCo(R), Vodafone(R), etc. By distilling my experience and learning into bite-sized, practical, engaging video and audio courses along with live coaching webinars and 1 to 1 business marketing coaching, I am excited to coach and develop entrepreneurs across multiple categories and geographies.
Through my online coaching sessions, you can unleash the tried and tested techniques that can help you tap into the heart and mind of your target avatar and build an emotional connection with them.
If your preference when learning new skills is via online video courses, then learn the top marketing and business branding tips to grow and scale your business with Next Dimension Story’s marketing 10x growth video courses. Click here to sign up for our Marketing Growth Hack Newsletter and download the Top 5 Marketing 1-Pager Worksheet for FREE to take the first step.
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You have already taken the brave step of launching your very own business. Now, upskill with powerful marketing techniques to scale, expand, and establish your business by attracting profitable customers to your product or service. All the very best!