During the Simply SaaS University Class: Marketing Metrics 101, Asia Matos, Founder and CEO of DemandMaven brought to light a few common marketing mistakes.

One of the main mistakes she has seen over the years is that companies don’t have a marketing strategy in place. No matter if they are a big enterprise, a small business, or a solopreneur, they seem to fall into a trap when it comes to distractions instead of focusing on big picture strategy. I like to call this the “should” distraction. Marketing teams read blog post after blog post telling them things they “should” do. They question:

• Should I be blogging more?
• Should I be doing Adwords?
• Should I be doing X, Y, Z, etc.?

They then try and implement these new “one-off strategies” and invest in the things they “should” do, but it doesn’t give the complete picture. It’s a cycle that turns into you investing into what feels, looks, and acts like marketing but doesn’t give you the end result you are looking for.

Startups get caught up in this cycle and say, “Marketing doesn’t work, so we’re not going to invest in it.” The result? You wait too late to invest in marketing, you’re unable to find that Product/Market Fit, and ultimately your startup fails.

This is why you need a marketing strategy, not a laundry list of one-off best practice tactics compiled together or a “should-be-doing-this” list either. It’s about crafting the full picture, and then iterating where you can to improve. In the University class, Asia talks about how you define that strategy, what you should be looking for, and how you take the sea of tactics and put them into a strategy that makes sense.

‍