Marketing Mistakes Small Business Must Avoid
Anas Mami June 06, 2025
3 min read
As a small business owner, your marketing efforts are one of the most important factors for success and ensuring a positive ROI.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest marketing mistake every small business owner must avoid is copying what large companies do, which ends up in a big marketing failure.
In this article, we will explore how big companies market themselves, why following the marketing strategies of big companies is a bad idea, and what you should do instead.
How Big Companies market themselves?
large companies usually use branding or mass marketing strategy. They advertise without stop in all channels to stay in their consumer top of mind and hopes that they buy when they need their product or service.
they allocate big marketing budget and have many goals to achieve: making profit, pleasing the boards of directors, appeasing stakeholders,… .
This type of marketing is effective but it’s very expensive to successfully pull off and takes a lot of time.
Unlike small businesses, time and expenses are not a problem for large companies as they planned years a head their product line, have massive advertising budget, and teams of marketing people.
A big problem arise when you try to copy big brands. You drop your ads few times and they nowhere near enough to reach the consciousness of their target audience.
Those people are receiving thousands of messages each day !
do you think that enough people will buy from you to cover your marketing expenses?
Your probably wrong !
Unless you have millions of dollars budget, then you have high probability of failure with this type of marketing.
what you should do instead
Now you’re asking: What should i do instead?
The answer is : direct response marketing.
It’s a particular type of marketing that gives small businesses a cut through and competitive advantage on a small budget. it’s about making sure you get positive ROI that is measurable and trackable. It’s focused on solving target audience problems with education and specific solutions. It’s the most successful and affordable way to reach the conscious of your ideal audience.
Here’s the main characteristics of direct response marketing ad:
- Trackable: You know which media and which ad generated the response.
- Measurable: You can measure the effectiveness of each ad.
- Targeting a niche: The ad aims to narrow target market.
- Has specific offer: The ad contains value-packed offer that aims to get the prospect to take the next step like requesting free report. The offer must speak to the audience needs, fears, interests, desires and frustration.
- It has call to action: Your ad must compel the prospect to do something specific. And after the prospect initial response, taking as much of the person contact’s information to contact them again.
- multi-step Follow-up: In exchange of their details, you should consistently offer valuable and educational content to your prospect to build trust and relationships.
Final Thoughts
From now on, stop making this marketing mistake, stop imitating the strategy of large companies. And instead, focus on a small niche, attract them with value-based offer, and build relationship with them so they become repeating customers based on value and trust.
References
Anas Mami
Digital Marketer
Welcome to my Blog, If you love reading and learning about marketing then you are in the right place. You’ll find everything you need from best practices in different Marketing domains to strategies that works. I hope you find this Blog helpful.