If you are working in the marketing space, you and every other marketer share some common challenges. Being able to reach the correct audience without spending too much, converting your free users into customers, generating fresh leads, etc. are just some of the challenges that you are facing.

Many challenges relate to some key areas like goals, budget, and audience. Considering these 3 aspects of any marketing plan, here are a five of the most common mistakes which marketers make and you, obviously, need to avoid:

Beginning Campaigns without knowing Your Objective

It is very easy to start an online campaign in today’s world. But running a campaign that gets you traffic without knowing what to do with it can guide you down a path, where you are only looking at getting a positive return on your investment without actually understanding how valuable each action of your audience is.

Research Your Audience

Everyone knows the saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Thinking that you can figure out who is going to use your product or your service is like trying to judge a library by looking at the neighborhood. This is the worst thing that any marketer can do. Never make decisions based on assumptions. If you saw the movie Under Siege II, you would know about this.

Lack of Understanding and Knowledge

Every platform reacts differently and has its own set of algorithms. Google AdWords relies a lot on “Quality Score.” Facebook relies a lot on a user’s value. They do both work on the bidding principle to generate greater exposure, but if you do not really understand how they work, you are going to face problems. For example, you need to know what “negative keywords” are when using AdWords.

Testing Campaigns Using Smaller Budgets

There are a lot of marketers who choose to test campaigns with very low budgets and then increase budget as they move forward. Unfortunately, most algorithms for advertising platforms take budgets into consideration when bidding.

For example, Facebook uses a model which determines your reach solely based on your budget. The results that you get from a campaign with a low budget can be very different from the results you get with a larger budget. The size of the target audience needs to be taken into account as well here. The frequency with which you run advertisements, post content, and its reach will need to be considered too.

This certainly doesn’t mean there is no need to test campaigns using lower budgets, but it does mean that you need to be sure of what you are testing. You also need to understand that the budget which has been allocated for a test is not going to influence possible results in any way.

Take the Audience for Granted

There are a lot of companies which work very hard in order to create an audience and then grow it. But once the audience trusts them, they start abusing this trust. Not paying attention to feedback, ignoring suggestions offered, and spamming users are a few examples of poor ways of managing audiences. You need to understand that the users are your advocates.