5 Marketing Mistakes That Cost Small Businesses Thousands

In 20-plus years of marketing, I’ve seen the same mistakes over and over again. Not exotic, complicated mistakes — simple, fundamental ones that quietly drain budgets and kill growth.

The frustrating part? They’re all fixable. Usually quickly. But businesses keep making them because nobody tells them clearly enough what’s going wrong.

So let me be that person. Here are the five marketing mistakes I see most often, roughly how much they cost, and exactly how to fix them.

Mistake 1: Running Ads Without Proper Conversion Tracking

Estimated cost: 30-50% of your ad spend, wasted.

This is the single most expensive mistake I encounter. A business is spending £1,000, £2,000, sometimes £5,000 a month on Google Ads or Facebook Ads, and when I ask “which campaigns are generating sales?”, the answer is a shrug.

What’s happening: They’re tracking clicks, maybe even website visits, but not actual conversions — form submissions, phone calls, purchases. Without conversion data, the ad platforms can’t optimise for results, and you can’t make informed decisions about budget allocation.

What it looks like in practice: A service business I audited was spending £2,500/month on Google Ads. They were getting plenty of clicks but had no idea which keywords or ads were generating actual enquiries. When we set up proper conversion tracking, we discovered that 60% of the budget was going to keywords that had never generated a single lead. We redirected that spend, and lead volume doubled within a month — with no increase in budget.

The fix:

1. Set up conversion tracking properly in Google Ads (phone calls, form submissions, purchases)
2. Install the Meta Pixel correctly if running Facebook/Instagram ads
3. Set up goals in Google Analytics 4
4. Don’t spend another penny on ads until this is done

Time to fix: 2-4 hours. Impact: Immediate.

Mistake 2: Trying to Be Everywhere at Once

Estimated cost: 40-60% of total marketing effectiveness.

I get it. Every article, every conference, every marketing guru tells you that you need to be on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, email, SEO, PPC, content marketing, influencer marketing…

It’s nonsense. For a small business with limited resources, spreading yourself across eight channels means doing all of them badly.

What it looks like in practice: A small e-commerce business I worked with was posting on five social media platforms, running Google Ads, trying to do SEO, sending occasional emails, and producing a monthly video. Their one marketing person was burnt out, nothing was done well, and the results were mediocre across the board.

We cut it to two channels: Google Ads (properly managed) and email marketing to existing customers. Within three months, revenue was up 35% — not because we were doing more, but because we were doing less, better.

The fix:

1. Identify where your customers actually are (not where you assume they are)
2. Pick 2-3 channels maximum
3. Go deep rather than wide — proper strategy, consistent execution, thorough reporting
4. Only add a new channel when existing ones are working and you have capacity

My rule: If you can’t do it properly, don’t do it at all. A dormant social media account is worse than no account — it tells potential customers you’ve given up.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Your Existing Customers

Estimated cost: £10,000-£50,000+ in lost repeat revenue per year (depending on business size).

This one genuinely baffles me. Businesses spend thousands acquiring new customers while completely ignoring the ones they already have. It’s the most backwards approach to growth, and it’s everywhere.

The maths are simple:

• Acquiring a new customer costs 5-7× more than retaining an existing one
• Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25-95% (Harvard Business Review)
• Existing customers spend 67% more on average than new ones

Yet most SMEs I work with have zero structured retention marketing. No regular email to existing customers. No loyalty programme. No re-engagement campaigns. No upselling strategy.

The fix:

1. Start an email newsletter to existing customers — even monthly is enough to stay top-of-mind
2. Segment your customer list — long-term customers get different messaging from recent ones
3. Create a re-engagement campaign — anyone who hasn’t purchased in 6+ months gets a specific outreach
4. Ask for reviews — happy customers will review you if you simply ask
5. Upsell and cross-sell — existing customers who trust you are far more likely to buy additional products or services

Time to fix: A basic email programme can be set up in a day. Impact: Compounds over months and years.

Mistake 4: Making Decisions Based on Vanity Metrics

Estimated cost: Highly variable, but leads to consistently poor investment decisions.

“We got 50,000 impressions this month!” Great. How many became customers? ”…”

Vanity metrics are numbers that look impressive but don’t connect to business outcomes. Social media followers, website page views, email list size, impressions, “reach” — these feel good but they don’t pay bills.

What matters is: How many of those followers bought something? What percentage of those page views converted? Of those 10,000 email subscribers, how many have spent money with you this year?

I’ve written extensively about what to measure in your marketing reports, but the short version is this: every metric you track should connect to revenue, cost reduction, or customer acquisition. If it doesn’t, it’s a vanity metric.

The fix:

1. Define 5-8 metrics that directly connect to business outcomes (see our reporting guide)
2. Remove everything else from your regular reports
3. Make decisions based on conversion data, not volume data
4. Set up a dashboard that focuses on what matters

Mistake 5: No Marketing Strategy at All

Estimated cost: Everything. You’re paying for marketing activity without marketing direction.

This is the big one. All the other mistakes flow from this.

Most small businesses I encounter don’t have a marketing strategy. They have a collection of marketing activities — some inherited from previous staff, some started because a salesperson convinced them, some they’re doing because competitors do it — but no coherent strategy connecting it all.

Without a strategy, you can’t answer basic questions:

• Why are we on this platform and not that one?
• What’s our target cost per acquisition?
• Which customer segments should we prioritise?
• How does our marketing connect to our business growth targets?

The fix:

Read our complete guide to building a marketing strategy for small businesses. Or, if you’d rather have someone do the thinking with you, that’s exactly what we do at Black Sheep Marketing.

A proper marketing strategy doesn’t need to be a 50-page document. It needs to clearly define your audience, your channels, your budget, your metrics, and your 90-day action plan. That’s it.

The Common Thread

Every one of these mistakes has the same root cause: lack of structure. No tracking structure, no channel strategy, no customer retention programme, no reporting framework, no overarching plan.

The businesses that get marketing right aren’t necessarily smarter or better-funded. They’re more structured. They know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and whether it’s working.

Worried You’re Making These Mistakes?

Most businesses are making at least two of these right now. The good news is they’re all fixable, often quickly.

Start with a marketing audit — either DIY or professional. It’ll tell you exactly where the leaks are.

Or book a free 30-minute consultation with Black Sheep Marketing. We’ll have an honest conversation about your marketing, identify the biggest opportunities, and tell you straight whether you need help or can fix things yourself.

Book a Free Consultation →