3 Big Mistakes Self-Marketers Make

Through our years in marketing we’ve found similar threads of thought in our clients. Particularly, we’ve found that our clients who first attempted to DIY market their company had three common problems. The cost, time, and ability it takes to run a successful marketing campaign are generally underestimated. Especially if they had little to no prior marketing experience.

Mistake 1: Money!

What they think it costs…

Often times these clients thought that they could run a marketing campaign for close to free. To be fair, it’s definitely possible to market a company for close to free. For example, social media is a powerful (close to free) tool in a marketing campaign. It’s completely free to write your own content and implement SEO. However, these campaigns will typically not make a big impression. DIY marketing often works great for our self marketing clients to start with. After a few weeks, or sometimes a few months there are things that go wrong with their close-to-free marketing campaign.

1. Their free trials expire. This is self explanatory. They may have grown to love a tool and rely on it. After a month, they’re forced to either pay for the service or find a free alternative.
2. The “free alternatives” begin to clutter their marketing process. Many free marketing softwares are great for very specific things. Very, very few can be used as a standalone product. This clutter leads to an overwhelming amount of upkeep.
3. Many of the free services they use like FaceBook, Twitter, and Google Plus, are very hard to update regularly and all at once. A great social media presence means updating FaceBook 2 to 3 times a day, Twitter 3 times a day, and Google Plus three times a day. Hand writing this many posts a day becomes increasingly difficult.

What it really costs…

There are a hundred ways to run a great (not necessarily free) marketing campaign. We’ve established a cost effective, customized strategy for each of our clients. We ask our clients many different questions on their company, their goals, and their needs. Once these aspects of their company have been assessed, we can get to work creating a great campaign within their budget. A campaign can run anywhere from very little to thousands of dollars depending on what the company needs.

1. Unique, Informative Content
2. Social Media Marketing
3. Search Engine Optimization
4. A Great Website

Mistake 2: Time!

The second thing that most DIY marketers are shocked to find out is the time sink. The sheer amount of time that goes into planning and executing a great marketing campaign is incredible. Almost all of our former DIY marketing clients were overwhelmed with this particular aspect when they came to us.

How much time could it really take?

Here’s a sample time budget for a small, professionally run website/search engine optimization:

Website Optimization

1. Assessing the company’s voice, taking notes on the appropriate tone: 2 hours
2. Determining the gaps in the current website, where it could be better: 2 hours
3. Writing high quality content to fill the gaps: 6 hours
4. Designing high quality graphics to go with the content: 3 hours
5. Fixing design errors in the website itself: 7+ hours

Search Engine Optimization

1. Assessing current search engine status using professional tools: 2 hours
2. Re-writing content to better suit targeted keywords: 5 hours
3. Implementing basic white hat SEO techniques: 3 hours

That’s 30+ hours that are easily put into an extremely simple website/search engine optimization. This does not include the time that it takes to continue writing high quality content that targets keywords. It is also not including the time that it takes to maintain the new error-free website, keeping it error-free.

Mistake 3: Experience!

The last common thread that our DIY marketing clients had was this: they thought that they could do it just as good (or better) than a professional. Marketing, especially online marketing, is a field that loses it’s subtleties to the general public. It’s incredibly common for a small business owner to go into a DIY marketing campaign thinking that it will be easy, only to come out the other end completely overwhelmed.

We’re here to help.

There are numerous benefits to “leaving it to the professionals.”

1. No more time sinks! Our clients no longer have to worry about banging their heads against a brick wall trying to bring in new website visitors. They no longer have to worry about their website going down. They no longer have to waste hours figuring out things we know how to do in minutes.
2. No more wasting money on DIY tools that don’t work. Many of our clients have remarked that if they’d known what they would spend on countless tools that don’t work would cost, they would have come to us first. After a quick cost analysis, many of them find that in the long run we were much cheaper than trying to handle it themselves with multiple tools.
3. No more falling down the learning curve. These clients also report the relief they felt when they no longer had to face the huge self marketing learning curve. Many professional marketers spend years, if not decades perfecting their craft. Trying to absorb those years of learning through an on the fly marketing campaign is hard. Really hard.

Every business needs a marketing plan. Without it, a company would get little traffic, sales would be low to nonexistent, and profits would greatly suffer. More often than not, this marketing plan should be run by professionals who know what they’re doing. This is simply due to the fact that a great marketing plan and campaign cost a lot of time, effort, and experience.

If you’re a DIY marketer who does well, we commend you! If you’ve been struggling with marketing your company yourself, we’re here to help.

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