One of the things we’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how an average small business can improve its marketing efforts by making some key adjustments. We often work with businesses that hire us to help them when things aren’t going so well or when they think they can simply do better with professional help and it makes sense to hire an agency from an ROI perspective. Sometimes, when we start engagements, we see some key mistakes that those businesses are making.

Here are 5 of the most common errors that can cost you as a small business both leads and potential customers.

Mistake No. 1: You’re Not Setting Up or Integrating Your Systems

At Marketing Nice Guys, we often talk about the importance of setting up the foundation for your marketing. What do we mean by that? It’s basically taking a look at a realistic buyer journey and how it affects what you do on the marketing side. For example, to ensure prospects keep moving through the funnel, it’s critical to make sure your systems first of all are integrated otherwise you won’t know if a.)Audiences are moving through the buyer process or b.) You won’t be able to effectively nurture them along the way. Systems integration includes the following common setups we recommend:

• • Setting Up Analytics Tracking on your Website. Especially Google Analytics (GA4). You’ll want to track where people are coming in from, what pages they’re visiting and what conversions you’re getting from the site itself.
  • Setting up Google’s Search Console. Search Console basically connects to your analytics to help you understand what search keywords are driving traffic to your website. It’s a key area to understand in that if a particular keyword or keyword searches are popular and you rank for them, you can take advantage of that “funnel of traffic” by providing more ways on that page to engage with you, acquire emails, or even convert customers. Search Console also helps you understand where you rank for particular keywords as well.
  • Connecting Your Website Forms to Your Marketing Automation System. We often see this mistake made by small businesses. They set up forms that alert them to new submissions but they don’t connect the forms automatically to their email marketing automation system or CRM. What happens here is that the business may take down the name and contact information and try once or twice to reach those who inquire but if they don’t do it, the business never follows up again. Better to set up a system so that any lead automatically goes into your email marketing automation system/CRM so that you can:
    • Store the contact information, including the method of acquisition (inquiry, download of a lead magnet, newsletter etc.)
    • Set up automated emails based on the type of acquisition to continue to nurture the prospect.
    • Further email prospects to stay top of mind.
  • Connecting Your Google Advertising to Your Google Analytics. Sometimes, we see ad accounts that are set up in a hurry (to get the ads out to run but the business hasn’t integrated any conversion tracking (or doesn’t it well). What happens in that case is that companies are basically blind as to what ads are working the best (or not) and then, as result, aren’t optimizing either the budget or the performance.  

Need help? Contact us for a free consultation. We set up affordable systems integrations for many different clients in different industries.

Mistake No. 2: Your Website Isn’t SEO-Optimized

If you think about it, roughly 40 to 60 percent of average site traffic comes from organic search results. Yet, few businesses seem to still pay attention to optimizing the amount of traffic they can get. In a sense, it’s “free traffic” too, if you know how to create pages that are both relevant to what people are searching for and your brand can become an authority in the industry/space you’re in.

What are the keys to SEO? Here are a few things you can get started on right now:

• • Understand Which Keywords Are Important for Prospects to Discover You. One of the things you can do is look at keyword volume. You can look at this worldwide or on a national or local level. One tool we recommend is using Google’s Keyword Planner (that’s available in any Google ads account that you can set up for free). If you find there are significant volumes of searches for a particular topic you specialize in, why not create a page about that topic?
  • Make Sure to Include High-Value Keywords Within the Page Elements and Understand the Topic Model That Makes Pages Seem Robust to Google. There’s certainly an art to SEO, like everything else in marketing but one thing is pretty clear. You want to make sure your high-value keywords (the ones people are searching for) are appearing on a unique page in the following places:
    • The title tag
    • The URL
    • The H1 (the big headline on the page)
    • Within the body copy, typographically emphasized through bullets, bold or italics.

In the ideal world, you also want to include what’s known as other “topic model” keywords, especially those that Google considers to make for a robust and authoritative page. For example, if I were creating a website page on the Kentucky Derby, I’d obviously want to include the words “Kentucky Derby” in many places. But I’d also want to include words on the page such as:

• • “First Saturday in May”
  • Churchill Downs (where the race is run)
  • Louisville, KY
  • Thoroughbred horses
  • 3 year-olds
  • Fastest time ever: Secretariat

You get the idea. The more you can create a page with robust content the better your page will perform.

• • Link to the Page From Your Own Website and Try to Get Backlinks from Other Websites. If you create a page, one rule of thumb is that you should have at least 5 other pages that link to that page. After all, if you don’t link to your own page, how important is that page in, say, Google’s eyes? The other little detail that matters: Make sure the link text is also descriptive and includes those keywords you want.

If you can, what you also want are links from other authoritative websites to your own. That can be hard since you don’t control those websites. But it’s worth a shot to email select organizations that wouldn’t mind promoting you and are in your particular area or industry. Examples could include:

• • • Clients or potential clients
    • Corporate directories
    • Company intranets
    • Publisher sites that already mention your company but may not currently link to you
    • Government or public websites in your local area.

Lastly, make sure to promote any of your pages in social media. This doesn’t count as a “backlink” in Google’s eyes, but this is where pages can  get indexed by the search engine (discovered) and you can increase visibility among your already existing network.

Mistake No. 3: You’re Not Acquiring Enough New Emails & Not Emailing Enough

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, one of the most important things you can do is to buildup your email list. Why? Because email is how you stay top of mind for those who already are aware of who you are. One big mistake we see many companies make is that they try to convince potentials to buy from them immediately but don’t think about whether or not they’re actually in market right now. In many cases, those customers aren’t ready to buy now and promoting only that to them can be a turn off. Why not instead try to acquire them to your email list using:

• • A lead magnet (content download, ebook, webinar)
  • A newsletter which provides more helpful information
  • A giveaway or sweepstakes

The other big issue we see: Companies don’t email those that are on their list often enough. This is actually one of the 5 biggest mistakes we see with email.

Mistake No. 4: You’re Not Spending Enough Time on Content (Especially Video)

We know running a small business is not easy. In additional to developing or refining a great product or service, you have to manage your books, pay staff, vendors or contractors and make sure they’re doing a good job. You probably have to do your own business development or sales, as well as marketing. But one thing we see too many small businesses neglect is creating great content. Yes, it takes time. But today it’s faster than ever with AI and different tools where you can auto-generate:

• • Full article text
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Graphics and more

Of course, that all needs to be edited and monitored but now it allows for content creation to become a lot faster. And even if you don’t have full access to AI or the various platforms, most of you have a phone. Which means you can take great video of yourself talking about why you’re an expert in your particular industry. We often say, it’s so important to put yourself out there authentically and it remains true to this day.

Mistake No. 5: Your Ad Campaigns Focus Too Much on Buying Now Rather Than Awareness

Outside of paid search, where people are actively looking for solutions right now, most places where you can advertise (on publisher sites or social media etc.) aren’t ideal for pushing “buy now” messages. That’s because that’s not the reason those individuals are on those sites to begin with. We often say pushing a buy now message in front of a prospect that just met you and isn’t in market right now is akin to inviting a first date back to your place without even taking them to dinner. Can it work sometimes? Sure, but more often than not, you’ll end getting rebuffed. Better to run ads with messaging that builds your brand and/or gets prospects to better understand your expertise.

Building your brand will eventually mean more searches for your company, more curiosity and engagement on your website, and eventually over time, more conversions. But you have to be willing to invest in a longer-term solution.

Conclusion

As always, we hope that helps. Contact us anytime for a free consultation if you need further marketing support in any of these areas. Our mission is to help you excel in digital marketing.