Companies spend millions of dollars every year trying to work out the perfect marketing strategy. While this is all great, and they break new ground every day, small businesses just do not have that kind of budget.

So should they just give up and forget about marketing? Absolutely not! With the help of marketing experts like Jurgen Cautreels, any business can plan and execute an amazing, effective marketing strategy.

Jurgen Cautreels is an industry leader in marketing and has helped plan record-breaking marketing strategies. Cautreels believes that any business or entrepreneur can create fantastic marketing results, regardless of their budget.

I interviewed Jurgen Cautreels to find some of the biggest mistakes he’s seen businesses make when it comes to marketing; here’s how it went.

When it comes to marketing, is it better to try to reach everyone, or is it more effective to narrow things down to a specific group?

It’s been proven over the years that it is much more effective to find a target audience and to aggressively market towards them. How you market to that audience will vary, but in general, it will lead to many more conversions, and you will spend a lot less money if you focus on a target audience.

What are some of the ways you can find that target audience? In your experience, do businesses go about this the right way?

I don’t think many businesses put in the correct amount of leg work. Sure there are tools and software that will help you find your target audience. There are analytic plug-ins you can add to your website.

But when it comes down to it, you should be on social media, browsing your competitors’ posts and finding out who follows them. Then you should check where else those followers like to post and how they like to interact with each other.

Should marketers and businesses interact with their customers a lot?

Absolutely, they should. This is where a good social media manager comes into play. Interacting with, not just customers but people prominent in the community that you’re targeting is crucial.

It shows you’re a part of the community and more than just someone trying to sell things. It legitimizes your brand and builds trust in your products.

I find a lot of businesses will only post ads and products, but there’s so much more to marketing than that.

How much time does it take trying to post and interact with customers on all of those platforms?

Well, you just pointed out another issue businesses face and another mistake many of them make. You don’t need to be focusing all of that effort across every platform.

Chances are, your target audience is mainly going to be on one or two social media platforms, and that’s where the majority of your effort should be. You can use polls, analytics, and sleuthing to figure out which platforms your audience likes to hang out on, and that’s where you should be lurking the most.

You bring up analytics a lot. Do you think enough businesses are implementing analysis tools? How hard is it to use data to drive a marketing strategy?

A lot of smaller businesses think that there’s nothing data can do for them, or it’s too expensive. There are so many cheap or free tools you can add to your website.

Data not only shows you who to target, but it also shows you who not to target and will save you so much money in the long run.