Face it, people wouldn’t be going out on their own or running a small business without guts of steel – but that same tenacity can really mess them up in marketing. As a critical success factor marketing is second only to customer service. Over the past few years I’ve seen the same mistakes over and over again in terms of small business and marketing – I’ve made most of them myself too.

Here are the top five pitfalls for I’ve seen most often in the past seven years at Wax – I’d love to add on to this list of marketing’s deadliest sins so please comment!

1. Miserliness – Business owners are guilty of expecting ROI when there isn’t any “I” – I heard Katie Paine, the measurement guru,  talking about this at the Inbound Marketing Summit a couple weeks ago and it rang so true for me. Many potential clients want to pay the least amount possible for marketing and PR but still want huge results.  If you want to really market your product, book or service you have to put down some cash. Marketing costs money because eventually it makes money. (For more on this topic, here’s a great article in BusinessWeek on what to spend on marketing)
2. Impatience – This one goes along with #1 – too many entrepreneurs are impatient when it comes to results from marketing or PR.  Or they think that one big hit will sustain them forever. You have to be creative, consistent and persistent – it may take a very long time – but that’s where those guts of steel come in. (I wrote about patience in July as well )
3. Narcissism – Don’t expect that media will be interested in you just for being YOU. Unfortunately there are very few opportunities where journalists will be interested in the story of your company or your own personal ‘back story’ unless it is incredibly unusual or amazingly compelling. Think of Lance Armstrong – how many stories come along like that? Find the compelling hook or create it by partnering with a non-profit, doing guerilla marketing, etc. (If you want more info on guerilla marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson is the guru)
4. Nepotism – Don’t let your employees create your marketing collateral. If you want to look professional, use a professional. There are tons of really inexpensive, brilliant designers on freelance sites like Elance. It may hurt your employee’s feelings but this is a business, not a chance for them to practice their skills with Microsoft Publisher.
5. Impetuosity – Advertising has to be planned – you can’t evaluate every opportunity because an ad rep happened to catch you on the phone or jump on every rate deal you get. Proper marketing is about developing the right mix of advertising, PR, social media, sales and other marketing techniques – it’s not about one silver bullet that will land you a ton of business. For more about the marketing mix, here’s an article I did for the New Mexico small business blog.
6. Hubris – So many business owners are brilliant – but that doesn’t mean you can just ‘pick up’  marketing and public relations skills. Charisma and confidence will only go so far – often just far enough to get you into trouble.  There are rules to marketing, and particularly in PR, that go way beyond the surface. Break them, and you could be severely penalized.

I suffer from all six of these in spades , so don’t worry this isn’t a finger pointing exercise. Just a reminder  that poor marketing (or lack of it) can be deadly for your small business.