If you are going to effectively grow your business in 2009, then there are 5 marketing mistakes you should be aware of. You will not grow your business beyond your current size if you don't effectively learn how to market yourself and the services you offer. Marketing is a mindset that you have to cultivate on a daily basis. As we begin to look at the mistakes people make as it relates to marketing their business, the fundamental mistake is that they don't see themselves in the business of marketing their service or product. They just see themselves as a business owner or teacher or service provider, whatever the case may be. If you don't see yourself as a marketer, you'll never grow your business. Eventually what you do is end up sort of scraping by because you never got that fact. I am going to share the Top 5 Marketing Mistakes with you today.

Let me share the story of Tom Adams and his brother with you in order to illustrate where we are going in this article: "My brother and I decided one of the ways we would make money for ourselves was we would create a lawn cutting business. I being the astute and smart person that I was, decided I would figure out how to build the best lawn care business. I made sure I had a really good lawn mower. I actually turned the lawn mower over and made sure I had the sharpest blades. I knew if I sort of constructed a pattern for doing people's lawns and made that lawn look great, I'd have a great business and I could make myself some money. My younger brother on the other hand, he sort of borrowed whatever he could find in terms of lawn mowers. He would often borrow people's lawn mowers. I had my own. He would borrow other people's. Within about two weeks, my brother Stan had six people cutting lawns around the city. I was still trying to figure out how to sharpen my blade. My brother was raking in the money. I was still trying to figure out how to have the cleanest lawn mower. What I realized very quickly and what I learned from, and that bothered me because he was my younger brother. All of a sudden he has all this money coming in and he's got this really cool business happening, little tiny self-made business. I was focused on building my lawn care business. He was focused on marketing his lawn care services. So, while I was cleaning my lawn mower he was knocking on people's doors saying, "We've got this cool business." He had so much business he was hiring people in his class to help him. That's the difference. If you don't get that, eventually you'll end up like I did, sitting by the side of the road with no business to have because I didn't know how to market myself."

Tom learned several valuable lessons that summer that illustrate the mistake that most business owners make. Let's take a closer look at 5 of the key mistakes:

Mistake #1 - Thinking that people care about you and your business. I hate to tell you this, but nobody cares about you. Doesn't that make you feel good? Nobody cares about you. I think one of the assumptions we have is that people care about what we do. What I've discovered in my own life is this, that people don't care. What people care about is themselves. They care about the problems they have. They care about their nagging pains, their problems, their predicaments. The only way they even bother to think about you or what you can offer them is if somehow you touch them where their pain is or if you touch them where their problems are or if you touch them in the middle of their predicament. So, I think the mistake that a lot of us make is we think people will automatically care about what we're offering in the world.

Mistake # 2- Belief that because you have a business, you will get business. I see this so often with clients of mine. They kind of live the field of dreams model of business. You remember Field of Dreams, the movie? "If you build it, they will come." The reality is they don't come just because you build it. Luck is not a strategy in marketing. The only way to grow your business and to grow the coaching business you've decided to be in is to effectively market. Marketing, for me, is a day-in, day-out never-ending, persevering kind of activity. If I'm a marketer of my services or products, I eventually have a business to support doing what I love to do.

Mistake #3 - Content to be the same as every other business like yours that is out there. You should know what makes you different, what makes your business special and tell everybody. Most small companies cannot afford large branding campaigns. Don't try to be Coca-Cola! The mistake people make in this is they tend to think that "if I just get my name out there enough, all of a sudden people will buy my service or product." I'm saying to you, it's a mistake. Just because you get your name out there is not going to make people buy your service or product.

Mistake #4 - Not having a laser-like focus on a specific niche or target audience for your business. Your goal as a business owner is to market to someone instead of everyone. When you try to market to everyone, you tend to reach no one. Can you describe your ideal client?

Mistake #5 - Failure to have and implement a marketing plan. A lot of people, when they don't have a plan, end up sort of haphazardly marketing a little bit here and there. The benefit of a plan is as you actually build and construct it for yourself, you have something you can confidently work yourself into and move yourself forward in as opposed to sort of sitting there and going, oh I wonder what I should do now. It's typically when you sit and wonder what you should do now that you make costly marketing decisions, not effective ones.

If you want to learn how to create an effective and affordable marketing plan, if you want to learn how to avoid these costly mistakes and 8 other ones, then you need to take our next marketing class: Solve the Marketing Puzzle.

Minette Riordan, Ph.D.
Publisher
North Texas Kids
972-516-9070
www.northtexaskids.com
minette@northtexaskids.com