by Austin Hale

Created on: April 17, 2009

Separating businesses into two different categories when talking about marketing mistakes is important. Start-up business advertising and well established business marketing each possess different traps that entrepreneurs can fall into.

Start-up Businesses:
Most small businesses want to generate cash flow right when they open which can result in a very serious mistake. Thinking that they are going to be an instant success or even want to become an instant success so badly these businesses get into a large amount of debt. They try to advertise themselves without pursuing other advertising avenues that could be a lot cheaper.

So let's say a small firm decides they want to succeed really badly and get a loan so that they can advertise on television. There is no guarantee that there will be enough business brought in to be able to make those loan payments. It would have been better if they had climbed up the ladder instead of jumping off a trampoline attempting to grab the top rung.

Another thing entrepreneurs need to avoid is in not seeing past the "norm" blinders. There are ways to advertise that aren't the "norm" that are just as effective. Not all advertising has to be through television, radio or billboards. With the Internet nowadays advertising can be even more creative and cheap.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the entrepreneur who decides they will advertise completely through grass root efforts. They don't do nearly anything except offer really good customer service. While good customer service is absolutely important it has its place. Advertising and good business practice are two separate areas and should be treated as such.

The real challenge is to be able to find a happy medium and to find unique and inexpensive ways to advertise when first starting out.

Well established businesses:
Congratulations! You've created a functional business plan and are enjoying the fruits of your labors. However, advertising at this point is as important if not more so than when you first started. Businesses that experience success when they first start need to realize that new customer acquisition is of utmost importance.

When attempting to bring in new customers even established businesses can run into sticky situations. The first is being cheap. This may sound counterintuitive, but if a business is up and running people have a different perspective than when that business was just starting. They need to start to transition from bootstrapping, or doing everything as cheap as possible, into spending a little bit of money to really get their name into the world as well as building a company image.

Another possible trap is trying to compete at a larger competitors advertising level. This trap is sprung entirely too often on business people. Two companies competing for the same customers while one is larger than the other. Thinking that in order to compete the small business attempts to spend as much as their rival to try to gain an edge. However the flaw with this sort of thinking is business is fluid it changes and moves. If a larger competitor feels threatened they have a much greater ability to fight back.

Each business is going to present different pitfalls and as such a good entrepreneur needs to keep looking forward. There are times to take risks and there are times to be conservative, but if due diligence is done properly you'll come out on top.

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