3 Deadly Mistakes Small Businesses Should Avoid

1# Not investing enough on brand building

Sales activation is the actions that motivates clients to buy. Whereas brand building doesn’t directly cause sales and it’s more about creating awareness and trying to associate your business with good promises. One of the biggest mistakes that some small businesses tend to make is not investing enough on brand building and doing too much of sales activation.

Small businesses at the early stages heavily rely on sales activation to survive but in the long term too much of it can hurt the brand. As Gary Vaynechuck puts it, businesses need to do enough of bringing value before asking their audience to buy, it’s jab jab jab then right hook.

There needs to be enough giving before the asking, depending on how big your ask is. It is like asking a stranger a big favor versus asking a friend who you helped and been there through difficult times for a big favor.

#2 Discounting too much

“Every dollar you discount, takes 10 dollars off from your market capitalisation of the company, it’s so easy to go on discount and sell the soul of the brand over 3 or 4 year period”Chip Wilson, Co-founder of Lululemon

Discounting can hurt your brand in the long term if it’s not done under the right circumstance. Discounting can give the signal that your business is not doing well if it’s done too much, which is not the image you want to present to your audience. However, discounting in a right situation could work to the advantage of your brand. For example if you discount to celebrate a cause or to give back to the community, this would help your brand grow in the long term as well as bring more customers in the short term.

3# Not thinking about customer experience

One of the deadly mistakes that some small businesses make is once they become slightly busier than usual they sacrifice their customer experience to fulfill orders. This can be deadly as it hurts the brand and spreads bad word of mouth. It is always to say no to orders and new customers than giving a bad experience.