“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” -Jane Fulton, Sudden Death by Rita Mae Brown, 1983. 

This quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, who never wrote or said any such thing. For a pithy saying about learning from mistakes, it has ironically become a common mistake in print and online. The meaning of this line is clear: if you do not learn from your mistakes, you will go insane. The same is true in business and marketing: failing to adapt and learn from errors will drive your business into the ground. 

That being said, many of us continue to make mistakes like misattributing quotes and never learn. There is no good reason for this; we just do it. It is a wise leader and marketer who examines the mistakes of others to avoid those mistakes themselves. To that end, here are five marketing mistakes you can learn from:

Excessive Self-Promotion

It is okay to be proud of your accomplishments as a business. Industry awards,  anniversaries and company values are noteworthy, but not critical to closing a sale. Keep in mind your customers may be more interested in your solutions and less so in your journey. Most prospects are concerned about what your product or service can do for them, not how long you’ve been in business or what industry awards you have won.

Overlooking Repeat Customers

Your marketing efforts must strike a balance between bringing in new customers while retaining existing customers and growing relationships through repeat business. Email marketing with exclusive offers for existing customers is a great low-cost solution for customer retention. Better still, email newsletters can easily be updated for relevance and usefulness over time.

Abusing Social Media

Creating social media pages, paying for expensive PPC ads and mass content spamming is abusing social media. Do not be that business. Create a strategy for the effective distribution of relevant content for your brand. Be the brand that is admired and praised for how they contribute to their followers’ lives in meaningful ways.

Leaving Out CTAs

Leaving out a CTA is a real “bush league” mistake, but it is so common it bears repeating. Never publish any marketing material or content without a call to action. Without it, you are just spewing keyword noise that gets filtered out by search engines and readers alike. Give purpose to the content you publish. Tell your viewers/readers what you want them to do. Here endeth the lesson.

Failing To Measure What Matters

Goals exist to give us purpose and to measure success. Without them, you are working very hard to go nowhere. Set goals and measure progress towards what will grow your business and not just show high-performance numbers. 

Not tracking performance numbers is like pouring money into a black hole and expecting some return. Marketing is a science, not magic. Find out why campaigns succeed or fail by the numbers and spend your resources wisely. The real world seldom gives second chances.

Ultimately, only you can learn from these mistakes to avoid the heavy cost of time and money they carry as a consequence. If you are a small business looking to scale up, we would love to talk to you about how to make that happen successfully while avoiding these five mistakes. Contact us today for more information.