Contrary to popular belief, marketing doesn’t have to cost a lot of money…nor does it have to be difficult.

The key is to approach it with a little creativity. Shifting your mindset from traditional approaches gives you the opportunity to drum up serious interest in your brand or service, which in turn can drive more traffic, additional customers, and ultimately, more profit for your business.

Getting your marketing efforts rolling however, leaves you susceptible to a lot of mistakes. So we’ve run down some of the most common ones to keep you on your toes and guide you on what you can do to avoid them.

1. Avoiding self-promotion

Marketing is about promoting your company or brand. However, most believe that it’s not appropriate to self-promote. If that seems counter-intuitive, it’s because it is. People have more opportunity to learn about your product if you tell them about it.

If you have a great product or service, and your confident about it, then by all means, talk about it. Keep the following in mind when you do:

• Support your claims by actually delivering on your product’s promise.
• Find a good balance between what you have to say about your brand as well as what others have to say about it.
• Use a single personality or spokesperson to promote you brand to maintain consistency.

2.  Neglecting SEO

Small businesses are perhaps best poised to take advantage of SEO strategies to bolster their marketing efforts. Yet a lot of companies set it aside, which is surprising given that, ranking high on search engines can translate to more traffic to your website.

It’s likely that the biggest barrier to SEO implementation is budget. But with the resources available online today, you can easily do the basics yourself. Start with:

• Figuring out a specific search keyword or phrase that is related to your company or business.
• Incorporate this keyword or phrase in your website wherever appropriate, but only in the most seamless and natural way possible.
• Link to high-authority blog sites and posts to leverage on the traffic that they bring. 

3. Not bothering with a blog

Regardless of whether you’re a Fortune 500, blue chip organization, or a small startup just dipping their tow in ecommerce, a blog can help draw visitors, spur interaction and even retain customers.

Blogs can help generate a significant portion of your site’s monthly traffic, prompt leads and help usher them through your sales funnel. Keep in mind that you have to do the following to leverage on your blog’s potential:

• Make sure your blog is hosted in your main website.
• Ensure that you develop high-quality content that’s relevant and useful to your readers.
• Engage your readers by responding to blog comments and build rapport with them. 

4. Ignoring social networks

It’s typical for people who are not in marketing to assume that social media is a big time waster. But investing time and effort on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ are actually great ways to source traffic and new audiences. It’s actually one of the most cost-effective ways to market and promote your business and effectively drive new traffic and engagement on your website.

Be sure that you:

• Promote original content that you develop yourself and find related ones that you can post to establish a streamlined theme for your social media networks.
• Regularly update and engage your audience.
• Keep in mind that it can take anywhere from six to 12 months before your pages become more active and popular. 

5. Forgetting about exceptional customer service

Sometimes, we get too carried away with the quality of our product or service that we start to overlook one of the basics of running a good business—exceptional customer service.

Even the best products are reliant on great customer service to bolster consistent sales. When companies fail to provide adequate back end support, it will translate to bad customer service, that in turn makes unsatisfied customers and bad word of mouth. In short, great customer service is an essential component of a comprehensive marketing plan.

Keep the following in mind when mapping out your strategy:

• Invest in your customers by giving them the best possible experience with your brand.
• Your customer service will reflect your brand in every way.
• A little assistance and customer support will go a long way.

Keep these common marketing mistakes in mind and consider taking an out of the box solution.

It’s the simplest way to get your marketing efforts going and start reaping results.

If you know of other marketing mistakes and want to share them, be sure to leave a message below.