Are you struggling to see the results that you want from your marketing efforts? You might be making some critical mistakes that are holding you back, but don't worry. Today, we're going to cover five common marketing mistakes that you might be making and more importantly, how to fix them. Now, the big value here is learning to avoid these mistakes are going to help you save time, money, and get better marketing results. Now, before we dive in, make sure it hits the subscribe button and the notification bell so you don't miss out on more actionable marketing tips. Let's dive in. Now, as you know, I enjoy sharing my screen, so we're going to pull the presentation.

And today we're going to talk about five marketing mistakes that you're probably making and how to fix them. First off, if you don't know who I am, my name is Caleb Roach, founder and marketing strategist at Club Creative, global marketing consulting firm. Formerly worked for Inspire Brands, the second largest privately held cubic quick service restaurant. I have a BBA and an MBA in marketing. And one of my favorite quotes is, ignoring online marketing is like opening a business, but not telling anyone. Let's dive in. Mistake number one is not defining your target market.

while many marketers and business owners are trying to appeal to everyone, leading, this ultimately leads to vague and unfocused campaigns. If we think about when it comes to your target audience, without a clear understanding of who your ideal customer is, your message is going to last relevance, and your marketing dollars are probably going to waste. If you think about this, when we think about Facebook ads, when you run Facebook ads, if you were to run Facebook ads with just broad targeting, it's going to lead to lower engagement and higher costs.

What we mean by higher cost is it might drive your cost per click, your click through rate drop down a little bit more. But in the long run, what you're doing is you're pushing ads out to people that are not going to react well to your ad. They're going to be non buyers of your product potentially. And it's going to lead to more people clicking on your link that are going to waste your time. Now, how do we fix this? First, we always recommend creating a buyer persona. What this is, is it's a detailed profile of your ideal customer.

based on demographics, behaviors, needs and pain points. What this looks like is you're going to identify, for instance, let's say you're a home service business. What you're going to do is you're gonna say, my ideal customer is named John. John is a 35 year old. He is a homeowner. He has two kids. He has a wife. He works in construction or he works at an office job and he loans maybe a three to $400,000 home. He makes $75,000. He can afford ex service.

Caleb Roche (02:21.73)

What this is going to do is it's going to help you identify what potential interests most of your target audience has and how you can resonate better with your offers and your service to provide a better customer service experience for your clients. Now, what you can do here is you can actually use data from your current customer base, surveys or market research to refine your target audience. What you can do is get as much data as you can. If you're in already established business, you can look at how often they have you come out.

what types of products and services they're doing and learn through conversations, what they enjoy, what their family's like, the different interests, things like that that you can understand because in the long run, the better that you can resonate and relate to your customer, the better the relationship that you're going to make with them. Now, one actionable tip here is you can use Facebook audience insights or Google analytics to get a better understanding of your audience's behaviors and preferences. What this means is you can look at trends. What is the standard kind of going on right now?

what's happening across your demographic, what's trending, what's very popular, all those are going to help with your mistake of not defining your target audience. Now, an example fix here is instead of just targeting everyone, let's say your clothing brand, what you're gonna do is you're gonna focus on women age 25 to 34, interested in sustainable fashion and eco-friendly products. Additionally, what you can do is you can look at engaged shoppers on Facebook and there's millions of other things that you could do here that you could identify and narrow your target audience.

to make things better in the long run. Now that you've defined your target audience, let's talk about another huge mistake, poor messaging. Weaker vague messaging is mistake number two that we see marketers and business owners making. What the problem here is your messaging isn't clear about what you offer or how you can help your customers, which means that you're using generic language that doesn't connect emotionally or solve specific problems for your customers. An example here is an ad that simply says, our shoes, instead of highlighting what makes the shoes unique.

let's say comfort, design, style, whatever problem or product you're solves, it's a big thing that we focus on those things. Now, how do we fix this, right? It's a big issue. One, we need to focus on crafting a clear value proposition, what makes your product or service different and why your audience should care. Where this comes in really clutch is when you can understand exactly what your value proposition is for your clients, what this does is it helps you identify how your pricing works.

Caleb Roche (04:47.224)

how much better your customer's life is after the service or the product. And what this does is it helps you clearly communicate to your customer the value proposition and why they need your services. Additionally, what you need to do is you need to speak to your audience's pain points and needs and use benefits-driven messaging, not just product features. Back to our result of buy our shoes. Instead of just talking about comfort, we needed to talk about how they're comfort and affordable and stylish all at the same time. Three core benefits.

that all wrap around what your ideal customer wants. Now, one of the actionable tips that we like to talk about when it comes to weak or vague messaging is applying the what so what test. What you got to do is after writing your messaging, ask, so what does this mean for your my customer? This is going to help you focus on the value that your product provides and make much clearer messaging in the long run. Now, an example fix here is change by our shoes to potentially something like this. Step into comfort with our sustainably crafted

Ultra cushion shoes designed for all day wear. Doesn't that sound better? Now, now that we've solved our issues with messaging being crystal clear, are you tracking the right metrics to see if it's working? That leads us to mistake number three, not tracking the right metrics. Many marketers focus unfortunately on vanity metrics like followers or likes. Unfortunately, these don't necessarily lead to conversions or business growth in long run. As we know, it's better as you have more followers.

Sometimes your algorithm can react a little bit better as you gain a following, but at end of the day, likes and followers do not necessarily lead to engagement. There's so many different situations that we've seen clients have a thousand, 2000 type audience members. And when they post something on Facebook, they get one like, and maybe they reach 50 people. This is a big problem across the algorithms, which means that there's so much more than just vanity metrics. For example, something we've seen, just like I talked about,

There's lots of people that have thousands of Instagram followers or Facebook followers, but there's no increase in website traffic or sales because of that following. Now, how do we fix this? Right? Big problem. We need to shift our focus to actionable metrics. Those that directly impact your business goals, such as conversion rates, customer lifetime value, return on ad spend, things like that. We've talked previously about customer lifetime value. We have some formulas in a prior video, but when it comes to the end of the day, we need to understand exactly

Caleb Roche (07:07.01)

how much our customers are spending with us, how our conversion rates are working across ads, across organics, across email marketing. In the long run, what's our return on ad spend and all of our marketing efforts in the long run. Some things you can do here is you can actually set up goals in Google Analytics. You can track UTM codes to measure convergence from specific marketing campaigns. You can use platforms like Hotjar that are gonna track online web behavior across your website. You can use something like a call rail that's gonna track call tracking.

enable you to understand where phone calls and form submissions are coming from. Those are a couple of our big recommendations that we always tell our clients to use. Now, what does a fix look like when it comes to something like this? Instead of just tracking likes on your Facebook ad, track how many people clicked on the ad and ultimately made a purchase. That's going to lead you into a really good understanding. Now that we understand the right metrics and we know that that's crucial, what if your marketing strategy itself is all over the place? This is why we need to move on to mistake number four.

Mistake number four is inconsistent branding and messaging across all channels. The problem here is that your brand's voice, colors and messaging differs across platforms, leading to a disjointed customer experience. Customers might not recognize your brand if it feels inconsistent. Now, an example here is having a different tone and style on Instagram compared to your website, which might ultimately lead to confusion across your audience. Let's say your Instagram is branded very well, it has a really earthy tone and they get to your website.

and it's very bright, it's very colorful, very aggressive, that's gonna lead to a very inconsistent brand experience, which might not seem like a big thing in the long run, but in the long run, it's actually a very important thing that you have consistency across all of the different channels to ensure that the client or someone that's interested in working with you understands exactly what your tone of voice is, what your messaging and branding is, because that's gonna set the precedent for when they work with you. Now, how do we fix this? One, we need to ensure that your brand guidelines

including your voice, color schemes, fonts and messaging are all consistent across platforms. Again, might seem like such a small thing, but it makes a very big difference in the long run. Now, secondly, we need to keep the tone of voice and visual identity, whether you're on social media, sending an email or writing a blog post. Sometimes there is some ways that you can include different types of voices or different brand identity across different channels, such as website and email. But in the long run, you need to make sure that there is at least some consistency.

Caleb Roche (09:29.208)

that your customers or someone that uses your service understand exactly who you are, what you stand for and what your values are. Now, a simple fix here is going to be creating a brand style guide that's going to help you maintain consistency across your team and any external partners. Whenever we work with clients that have a brand guide or they're building a brand guide, it helps us so much more because we understand exactly what colors we should use, what colors to avoid, what fonts to use, and it helps us create consistent branding, especially when you're working with a marketing agency.

or external partners, it makes the process so much easier. Now, an example fix here is if you use a casual and friendly tone on social media, you need to carry that same voice through to your email marketing and website. Again, there needs to be no confusion on that front. Now, once your branding is consistent, it's time to focus on engaging your audience correctly, which brings us to our final mistake.

Many marketers are failing to engage with their audience. You see that they're treating social media and email marketing as one way communication, only pushing content without interacting with their audience. Again, this is very common across the agency world, across clients. What we see is a lot of people are posting regularly on Instagram, Facebook, but never respond to comments or direct messages. This is a major problem because while it's great to have at least a little bit of exposure on social platforms, the most important part is to engage with your audience as you're building a brand online.

Now, how you fix this is you need to engage with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions and initiating conversations, which is going to lead to building a community around your brand. Secondly, you can use polls, questions or user generated content to increase interaction. We'll talk about user generated content in the long run in a couple of different episodes, but in the long run, all of these things are going to allow for you to build a better audience online as you grow your following. Now, an actionable tip here is

Set aside time each day to engage directly with your followers on social media platforms because it not only helps you build trust, but it builds loyalty across your audience members. Now, an example fix here is you can turn a basic Instagram post into a conversation starter by asking your followers for their opinions on a new product via stories, via post. This makes a big difference because you can get some more interaction, understand exactly what your customers want, and it's going to lead to much better marketing results in the long run. So there you have it.

Caleb Roche (11:50.382)

the five marketing mistakes that you might be making and more importantly, how to fix them. I'm curious, what should these mistakes have you experienced? Drop a comment below and let me know. And don't forget to like this video, subscribe to the channel and hit the bell so you don't miss future marketing tips.