Most small business owners often build their own marketing strategy with no expert involvement.

There are many ways for a business to achieve its goals, but not every method suits everyone.

Lets talk about top 5 money wasting practices.

1. Focus on many social media platforms.

      Each social media platform is different and attracts a different audience. While it can be beneficial for a big brand to have its presence on as many platforms as possible, for small business owners it is a wasted effort. A business needs to understand where its target audience are and focus on that platform. The goal should not be to increase followers, but to increase the engagement.

2. Large amount of Low Quality Content.

    New businesses often engage in creation of content as often as they can. This practice is often counterproductive as it results in large quantities of low quality content. 

The correct practice should be to produce high quality content consistently.

3. Unrealistic expectations.

It is common knowledge that 30% of small businesses fail in 2 years. This is mainly because of unrealistic expectations which can never be fulfilled. 

The solution is to plan marketing budgets as practically as possible. The estimates and projections for first two years are the most crucial and much thought is needed into it.

4. Not Tracking the Campaigns.

If you are not tracking your marketing results, you are losing out. Businesses must use analytics from the day one. It is not sufficient to just collect data; it is equally important to base your decisions on it.

Proper tracking can help you optimise your ad budgets and help you select the platforms which are giving you the best return on investment on your expenditure.

5. Not Understanding your audience.

Your audience determines your entire marketing strategy. You decide your tone, visual, language etc based on who you are trying to sell. Many businesses make this mistake of using one size fits all method for their advertisement campaigns.

Creating a buyer persona should be your priority when starting marketing campaigns. The ad campaigns that work for 40-year-olds will not work for 20-year-olds and vice versa.

Thinking about these little things can help you minimise your ad spend, reducing the chances of failure and increase your chances of success in the long run.