5 Common Marketing Mistakes Small Business Owners Make (And How to Fix Them Fast)

If you’re a small business owner, chances are you’re spending money on marketing that’s quietly leaking profits and you might not even realise it.

I see it every week in my accountancy practice: great businesses throwing thousands at campaigns that will never work.

The good news? Fix just one of the mistakes below and you’ll start seeing better results within weeks. Fix all five, and you’ll transform your marketing forever.

Let me introduce you to Jennifer.

Jennifer runs a lovely florist. Recently, she told me she needed more customers.
So I asked, “I presume you email offers to your customers for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day?”
She looked at me and said, “Justin, I don’t ask for their email — we don’t run an online business!”

That’s when the penny dropped. She was making the single biggest marketing mistake I see every week.

1. Not Collecting Customer Emails — Your Cheapest Repeat Sales Channel

Whether you sell flowers, coffee, cars, or tax advice, an email list is your most cost-effective marketing tool.

The secret? Ask for emails at the moment customers are most delighted with what you’ve done for them. That’s when they’re most likely to say yes.

For Jennifer, that moment happens during big flower-buying occasions: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthdays. For me, it’s tax deadlines and legislative changes. You’ll have your own seasonal peaks — the trick is to identify them and be ready.

Without an email list, you’re anonymous. You might spend £15 in ads to get someone through the door, but without their details, you’ll pay that again to bring them back.
With email, you can market to them for pennies.

2. Selling Too Soon Instead of Delivering Value

When I suggested Jennifer build an email list, she said, “People see mailing lists as spam.”

That’s the problem. If your first emails are all sales pitches, you’ll lose people immediately.

Instead, send education first, sales second.
Selling straight away is like going on a first date and proposing marriage.

For Jennifer, we offered something genuinely useful:
“Those are beautiful flowers. We’ve got a short series of three emails teaching you how to look after them. I’ll pop you on the list so they last as long as possible.”

She’s not spamming — she’s building trust. And trust is what earns permission to sell later.

This is what marketers call a sales funnel. In plain English:
Give people something they can’t get from your competitors.

3. Making Yourself the Hero Instead of the Customer

Most small business websites open with the owner’s photo and a “We’ve been in business 20 years” story.

The truth? Your customer doesn’t care.
Not yet.

They are the hero. They have a problem, and you’re the guide who can solve it.

We flipped Jennifer’s site from “family-owned since 2002” to:
“Sick of supermarket flowers that wilt in 48 hours? Our bouquets are guaranteed to last a week — or we replace them free.”
Plus, we added photos of happy customers holding their flowers.

When you lead with customer pain and your specific promise to fix it, your marketing becomes magnetic.

4. Overloading Your Marketing With Too Much Information

One of my clients, an optician, sent me a newsletter crammed with:

• New lens tech

• Eye health tips

• Opening hours

• A special offer

• Charity news

Guess what happened? I skimmed the first, glanced at the second… and ignored the rest.

It’s not that I didn’t care; our brains can’t handle that much at once.
There’s a name for it: cognitive load. Throw ten balls at me and I’ll drop nine.

(Funny story — cognitive load didn’t make it into my book The Science of Business because my editor cut it. But if you want science-backed answers to business problems, it’s worth a read.)

The fix?
One idea. One message. One call to action.
If your offer is “Free coffee with this leaflet,” don’t hide it behind four other things.

5. Not Tracking Your Results

This is the fastest way to waste money: running a campaign and never knowing if it worked.

Jennifer delivered 10,000 leaflets and sold… about the same as before.

The problems?

• Too much text

• No customer-focused imagery

• No clear call to action

• No QR code or trackable link

In my own business, I track everything: email open rates (68%), click-throughs (8%), calls from Google listings, even dedicated phone numbers for certain campaigns.

When you measure, you can double down on what works and cut what doesn’t. Without tracking, you’re just guessing and guessing is expensive.

Final Word

Fix one of these mistakes this week, and you’ll start building momentum straight away.
Fix all five, and you’ll change the way you think about marketing and the results you get from it.

If you found this useful:

• Subscribe to my AskJT YouTube channel for weekly, practical small business tips.

• Check out my book The Science of Business for more science-backed strategies you can apply today.