I was in a conversation with an exasperated businessman. He wanted to talk about his failed attempts at marketing. He said he had tried everything and nothing was increasing his sales. So I started to ask some basic questions, like who are you targeting, what problems do they have that your brand solves, what’s your competitors doing to sell them, and why did your current customers buy from you in the first place? You may not be surprised, but he didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but he did know that no one was contacting him from his website or his social media or the brochures he had printed. They all cost him a lot of money, he told me, and he had had no return on his investment. To him, defining a target market and researching their needs was not marketing. Creativity was marketing! Printing nice looking brochures and producing a website was marketing.

There is some general confusion that happens around creative marketing tools and marketing strategy. You cannot be effective at marketing if you try to put your creative ideas ahead of a plan. If I were building a house, might I need a hammer? Yes, but if I had a hammer, but no plans, could I really build a house? No. Before you can effectively begin to market your products and services, you have to create a strategic marketing plan. Too often, the creative gets in the way and hampers your business moving forward.

There are some other common mistakes that businesses make when they are trying to market their brand. Here is a list of the more common mistakes I see.

1. Believing everyone is my target market. Unless you are selling air, not everyone is going to be attracted to your brand. If you are going to be effective in marketing, you have to define the people who are most likely to buy from you. Your brand may appeal to people at a certain stage of life or in a particular industry. You may be likely to attract people who have similar life experiences or live in a certain geographic region. The narrower you can define your target market, the more effectively you can market to them.

2. Not listening to the needs of people in your target market. You should get to know the trending thoughts of your target market. They will tell you what they want from you. Do a little research and it will help you effectively market to them.

3. Not believing the research. Closely tied to not listening is the business leader who hears what his target market wants, but thinks he knows better than the group he is trying to sell. Do you see the absurdity of that kind of thinking… I know better than you what you want to buy from me!

4. Not understanding the differences between you and your competition. If you are going to be effective in marketing, you have to make a distinction between your brand and theirs. If you have listened to your customers, you should be able to see where these differences make you exclusive with them. Market this difference.

5. Forgetting about your current customers. Too often businesses are too focused on new customers that they forget about those who have bought from you in the past. Give them a reason to come back to you through your retention marketing efforts.

6. Believing social media "likes” are sales generators. Social media engagement certainly has its place in your marketing plan. It helps you gain a solid reputation and broaden the appeal of your brand to more people, but it typically is not a direct line to your cash register. Social media has a role to play, understand it for what it is.

7. Not tracking your marketing results. If you don’t measure, you have no idea if you are being successful or failing with your marketing. It is another way to understand what your target market wants or doesn’t want from you. Not everyone will fill out a customer satisfaction survey, but everyone votes with their buying habits. Make sure to track the path from your marketing to the sale.

8. Narrowly-focused, unbending marketing planning. Chalk this one up to the "we’ve always done it this way,” mentality. Look, marketing is a fluid thing. People are fickle: what they loved yesterday they will grow tired of eventually. You have to keep things fresh in marketing. If you never change your marketing, it will eventually fail you.