Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make (Part Two of Two)

Welcome back! If you haven’t already, please check out the first half of this article, found at Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make (Part One of Two). There you can read about the first four mistakes and also see my intention with this set of posts. Otherwise, I’d like to jump right back in to finish off this list…

Handing Off Marketing Duties to a Junior

This. Is. Huge. This topic is probably going to be a post of its own at some point, but for now, I will cover it briefly here.

I understand the impulse to hand off marketing duties to your junior employees – they’re cheap and millennials so they understand all that ‘Facebook stuff.’ However, your marketing is the primary customer-facing attribute to your customers and to potential new customers. To treat marketing duties as anything other than a major part of your business strategy would be a mistake. While this is not something the owner necessarily needs to be performing his or herself, this is something he or she should understand and be able to jump into this role in an urgent situation. This is also something that should be handled by a trained professional – someone who not only has fluency with the technology but also understands the business strategy behind the content.

No Social Strategy

In order to set a direction for your business growth, you must know the destination. Vanity metrics – numbers like followers, likes, hearts, etc. help nothing but the ego. Serious business owners need to know where they want to grow in order to help to determine which analytic numbers are important to track to demonstrate progress.

No Clear Sense of WHY 

Piggybacking on the subheading above, having a clear sense of why in both your business and your growth is important in vetting new opportunities, partners, employees, etc. I cover this more thoroughly in my in-depth examination of Simon Sinek’s book, Start With Why, my March Business Book Club choice. Having a clear sense of where you’re going reveals opportunities along the way and having a clear sense of why you’re you’re headed there filters those opportunities to find the best fits for your lifestyle and your brand.

Don’t Invest in a Team or Appropriate Materials 

I’m not necessarily of the belief that you have to spend a ton of money to make money. However, I also don’t think you get anything for free. It’s easy to play the ‘must be nice’ game while looking at someone else’s website or personal assistant, but don’t fool yourself. Just having these things doesn’t necessarily mean that the business is paying for them. Invest in yourself, your vision, your business. Slowly start to build the team that increases your bandwidth to be able to take on bigger projects and scale your business. Take the time to train your employees carefully and correctly. Invest in materials appropriate for the caliber of the client you want to attract. I used a similar example of this in Online Marketing for Restaurants to Grow Customer Engagement. Restaurants should be using high-quality professional photography of their space and their food on official channels like their website and advertising.