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5 Marketing Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make That Can Damage Business

Entrepreneurship is not easy, especially when it comes to making a marketing strategy for your startup business. Entrepreneurs learn new things by analyzing the market trend and what works for their brand. Despite, all the analysis and statistics, they tend to make mistakes.

Many mistakes most of the time that looks massive, end up being temporary setbacks. However, some mistakes may prove fatal for a startup business plan. These mistakes arise only when entrepreneurs exhibit a fundamental misunderstanding of best marketing practices. So if you are an entrepreneur and looking to avoid marketing mistakes that you must avoid, here is a list:

1. IGNORING THE BRAND

Your brand serves as the foundation of your business identity. It acts as a connecting link between your small startup business and your customers. Hence, if you try to market your business without a brand, you might have to taste the dust.

When people see your logo, your tagline, or pick up on your brand`s tone, they will form an opinion about your brand. This is the connection that is necessary for a business to thrive. Without it, your business is just floating in free space without any recognition and association.

So never market your business without brand building. The more connections you build the more familiar your customers will become with your brand.

2. MARKETING TO EVERYONE

One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs can make is not being aware of their target customers. For instance, not everyone loves Apple IPhones and there could be multiple reasons like budget, operating system, interface, or restrictions.

Hence, it is very important to choose your market niche carefully and not market your product to everybody. Many entrepreneurs think that “everybody” is the largest possible audience, and so it offers the largest possible return. But the truth is far from this notion. A generic brand message has the least recall value.

So to stand out, you have to be unique when it comes to marketing, just like your startup business idea. Create specifically crafted messages for one segment of your customers at a time.

3. PRESUMPTIONS ABOUT AN AUDIENCE

Making presumptions can be disastrous when it comes to potential customers. There are some marketers who very well understand that every customer is unique and hence, they should craft messages by keeping a specific audience in mind. Still, they don`t do it effectively!

Instead of relying on data and statistics, they rather make broad assumptions about their target audience. This can be detrimental for any business, especially for a startup business that is struggling to enter the market. Every entrepreneur needs to ask this question to themselves. If they are making their market decisions because of the way you think things work, or because of the way things work in practical work?

4. INVESTING LITTLE OR TOO MUCH

Successful investment in marketing is similar to putting salt in a dish- both demand a careful balance! Investing too much money at the beginning of the startup can be a waste of money because you might not know your target audience very well. You don`t know which platforms are more suitable for your business and what works best for your brand.

On the other hand, if you are investing too little, it will not yield desired results and you might not be able to acquire new customers.

5. FAILING TO EXPERIMENT

Innovate or Die- this phrase defines marketing in the best possible way. If you are not experimenting, you can`t improve. And marketing is not a point-and-shoot game. It is a game of setting and resetting expectations, getting closer, but never reaching set parameters.

Watch how NOKIA lost its grip on the market and failed as a mobile giant in this video:

Hence, the only way to craft a perfect marketing strategy for your startup business is to try new things and being bold with your strategies, and see which ones work and which ones fail.

The above marketing strategies should be avoided when trying to establish a brand presence for a startup business. These mistakes are not only damaging for new entrepreneurs, but they are also some of the most common. The good news is that if you catch these mistakes early, you can up your marketing game.

If you want to know how to craft marketing strategies for your business, you can take our business coaching program.

4 Business Leaders Who Bounced Back From Their Mistakes!

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Meg Cabot

One of the scariest things that almost every human being feels to do is to make mistakes, to take risks and meet failure, to try out of the league and fall hard. But mistakes are essential for professional as well as personal growth for both the individual and the organization.

We all make mistakes, every one of us. Making mistakes is a sign of business motivation, and that we are trying something new in your life. It is the pathway to great ideas and innovation. It is the best way to learn and grow. If you are not making mistakes, then we likely are not doing enough new things outside our comfort zone, and that itself is a blunder.

If you thought only common people like you and me are prone to making mistakes in the business, think again! Legends like Ratan Tata, Narayan Murthy, Satya Nadella, Steve Jobs, and many other successful millionaires have made mistakes and learned from them too!

Here are some mistakes that these leaders made, but learned from them to bounce back in their lives:

1. RATAN TATA

One of the most esteemed and respectable personality in the business world, Ratan Tata needs no introduction. The Chairman of Tata Trusts and former head of Tata Sons has achieved great success with his incredible business ideologies and strategies. However, even he admitted his mistake when his ambitious project TATA NANO failed to create waves in the market.

According to him, his greatest mistake was branding the Nano car as the cheapest instead of ‘most affordable’, which was the true intention behind bringing it into the market. By using the word ‘cheapest’ instead of ‘most affordable’, a negative impact was created on the market.

You can watch the full story of what led to the failure of TATA Nano, right here to get some business motivation from this legendary industrialist.

2. SATYA NADELLA

Indian-born Satya Nadella made headlines when he replaced billionaire Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO in 2014. Before he replaced the former CEO, Nadella was Microsoft EVP of the cloud and enterprise group. Since he took over the charge, Microsoft`s stock has increased by more than 150%. However, this was not always been the case.

In July 2015, the Microsoft CEO acknowledged that thinking that the personal computer (PC) will reign supreme forever was his biggest mistake. Today, smartphones have overshadowed PC as the hub for everything to some extent.

He has steered Microsoft away from a failing mobile strategy of NOKIA, and focused on other segments, including cloud computing and augmented reality.

Watch the full story here:

3. ELON MUSK

Elon Musk, who is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at Space X is also the CEO of Tesla Motors. A successful entrepreneur and a business magnate has also made mistakes that he still regrets. While participating in a Q&A at South by Southwest, the Tesla CEO said that the biggest mistake that he committed in his entire career was not being more involved with Tesla in his initial days.

From 2004 to 2008, Elon Musk was a lead investor in Tesla. However, he was also the CEO of SpaceX, a space exploration company. Today, he has moved past his mistakes and regrets to run a successful million-dollar company.

Watch his inspiring journey, right here:

4. WARREN BUFFETT

The year 2015 marked the 50^th anniversary of Warren Buffett and his partner`s decision to take control of Berkshire Hathaway. However, the current CEO of Berkshire Hathaway once considered this to be the biggest investment mistake and called it a “monumentally stupid decision”. He said that the only reason behind him acquiring the company was because it was cheap.

Watch his amazing entrepreneurial journey, here:

The majority of entrepreneurs and professionals are not particularly interested in making mistakes and reliving them. However, many self-made millionaires are masters at learning from their successes and failures. That is the only way to analyze what went right, and what didn’t work out for the business.

So, keep making new mistakes, but find reasons for their failures and ensure that you do not repeat them. That’s the key to success and gaining incredible experiences in the journey called LIFE.

Prepare yourself to counter the challenges that you might encounter on your entrepreneurial journey with our online business courses for entrepreneurs. You can take ‘Entrepreneurship Course’ and take the first step towards achieving your dreams.