During my marketing work with small and large businesses, and with my own business, I've seen the many ways that we can trip ourselves up and sabotage our efforts.

Below are 4 surefire ways to fail:

1. Do not have any written goals

If you don't know where you want to go, then how do you know when you've got there?

If you haven't figured out what your marketing and sales goals are, and the overall goals of your business, then it's pretty hard to market with any success. You can't plan properly, allocate resources or track the success (or lack of) of any activities.

It's not enough to express these goals verbally - you need to sit down and write out your objectives for each of your marketing strategies. It's a well documented fact that people who put their goals down on paper achieve a higher rate of attaining these objectives.

Without an idea of where you're going, then you're bound to get absolutely nowhere.

2. Have inconsistent marketing

By being inconsistent, many business owners ensure that they don't do anything long enough to make any sort of impact on business and sales.

People need to have time to get to know, like and trust you and this requires consistent, long-term marketing strategies. You can't expect to send one piece of direct mail or put out your newsletter sporadically and build a marketing relationship with prospects and customers.

The best way to build consistency into your marketing is to focus on a couple marketing strategies only and get them set up and operating smoothly and on auto-pilot as much as possible. Then, once you see results with that, you can introduce a couple more tactics and so on.

If you do not show consistency in your marketing, then your prospects and clients won't show any consistency back in terms of first-time and return sales.

3. Try to appeal to everyone and their dog

I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Try to please everyone and end up pleasing no-one." If you try to market, advertise, talk to, and reach everyone you'll end up squandering your money, resources, time and energy. You need to have a target market and better yet, a niche market, where you can focus the bulk of your strategies and know that group of people thoroughly inside and out.

When your marketing activities and materials are too generic and do not appeal to a specific group of people, you increase the chances of having them appeal to no-one - as the marketing doesn't "speak" directly to their needs and wants.

4. Do not have a marketing plan

If you don't have a plan, then you'll miss out on marketing opportunities, won't be able to organize yourself or anyone else, won't know what's working and what's not, and you'll have lower sales.

Many people are turned off by the thought of a marketing plan and to tell you the truth, I don't really like long, involved plans either. However, what I do have is a marketing action calendar where I plot out when I'm sending out my newsletter, email campaigns, direct mail; when I'm going to have a special promotion or workshop; when I'm going to be away on holidays or at my coaching retreat; and so on.

By having an idea of when and what you are marketing, you can make the most of your budget, resources, time, and great opportunities that come your way.

If you don't have a roadmap of what you're doing, you'll end up doing not much.

If you follow these 4 surefire ways to fail at your marketing, you'll do just that. However, if you want to see your business grow and succeed take the time this week to write your objectives, make a marketing action calendar, determine the unique audience you want to talk to, and go after them with consistent marketing!


------

Jody Gabourie, The Small Business Marketing Coach, delivers simple, innovative and powerful marketing strategies to help business owners find and keep their most profitable clients. To learn more about how she can help you take your business to the next level, and to sign up for her FREE special report, ezine and articles, visit her site at http://www.JodyGabourieMarketingCoach.com