Marketing and advertising mistakes can be very costly for both big and small businesses. You could miss opportunities by not reaching your target audience or lose sales to your competitors through marketing mistakes. However, most of the time, people talk about how to do marketing the right way but forget to tell you what to avoid to make sure you get the best from marketing. There are many lessons you can learn from the poorly executed marketing campaigns of others. Here are four common mistakes to avoid so you can start coming up with profitable marketing strategies that yield long-lasting outcomes.1. Poor ResearchBefore you launch a marketing campaign, it's essential to understand your clients. Regardless of the purpose of your marketing campaign - to create awareness, increase engagement, generate leads, etc. - you must remember the audience to have the desired impact.First, set aside a portion of the amount you intend to spend on marketing and spend it on research. Use that money to test customers' responses across different marketing channels such as social media, direct mail, email newsletters, etc., and see how they do before you increase money and effort into a strategy. This is commonly known as A/B testing. After discovering a successful strategy, scale it and enjoy the benefits. But remember not to stop there as marketing is a continuous effort.2. Forgetting Your Loyal CustomersIt's crucial, especially for small businesses, to retain their current customers and ensure that they remain happy and keep getting better. Unfortunately for small firms, they either lack insight into their valuable and loyal clients or lack the resources needed to grow stronger relationships with them. This can be attributed to the technological or human resources challenges that small companies sometimes experience while growing. To solves such an issue, small firms should invest in the areas that cause the issue.3. Content Without ValueLet your customers see your value through your skills and expertise. Most small businesses can come up with content, but what they are not able to do is create valuable content. Customers desire to invest their money and time with your products and services because you know a given industry. This means that they can't see your value if you don't give them content to show this. Most small firms can't deliver this to their clients.

Vinyl banner for Habit for Humanity Restore project; image by Matt Jackson, via flickr.com, CC BY 2.0, no changes.

To come up with valuable content, focus on what they want to learn and what they need. Include photos and imagery such as you would do on a banner to reinforce the message without overwhelming your customers with a lot of text. Banners come in a variety of designs such as vinyl, fabric, mesh, etc. To learn more about vinyl banners and other types of banners, check several websites which are owned by banner making companies for details. Also, to make sure that your content has value, incorporate relevant statistical data to substantiate your statements and thought because fact-based information is always convincing.4. Unwillingness to InvestIt's common for small and new businesses to fail to invest well in marketing. Studies conducted recently indicate that many business owners regret failing to invest when they should have. From the time businesses start operating to the time they hit their 20th year, the findings showed that of their budget, only 10% goes to marketing while they could have allocated at least 25% for better success.ConclusionThe above list may seem discouraging, but it's made up of the mistakes that some major organizations made in the course of growing up. What such mistakes should do is teach small business lessons to be better. Remember these principles to help you make better marketing decisions and save you both time and money.