Marketing Missteps That Hurt Your Brand

We're tackling unprofessional marketing mistakes that could be hurting your business credibility. Shelby shares her personal experience with these common errors and provides simple, actionable solutions to fix them immediately.

• Inconsistent branding across platforms weakens recognition—put your logo on everything and maintain consistent fonts and colors
• Poor photo quality and overuse of generic stock photos reduces engagement—take real photos of your work, team, and projects instead
• Missing or non-mobile-friendly websites hurt credibility—even a simple landing page is better than nothing
• Neglecting your free Google Business Profile costs you visibility—claim and verify your profile immediately
• Overselling on social media drives followers away—focus on educational and engaging content with limited direct selling
• The right content mix builds trust before asking for the sale

Need help implementing these changes? Visit our website to request a free audit of your business marketing and get personalized, actionable recommendations to improve your professional image.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's up y'all?
It's Shelby here with theMarketing Happy Hour podcast.
Today we are talking aboutmarketing mistakes that may make
you look a little bitunprofessional.
You may not wanna hear aboutsome of these, but I've done
them in the past.
I've done them for clientsbefore, and so I'm gonna tell
you how I easily fix thesemistakes that made my marketing

(00:24):
a little bit less professionalthan what I would really have
liked to begin with.
So let's dive right on intothis.
The first thing and I amconstantly preaching this is
inconsistent branding acrossyour platforms.
I want to see your logo oneverything that you put on
social media.
I want to see your logo oneverything that you put on

(00:46):
social media.
I want to see your logo onflyers on your vehicle.
I want to see it on yourwebsite.
And then, outside of that, whenwe're talking about branding,
we want to make sure we use thesame fonts, the color scheme, so
that way, people will see andstart to put together like, oh,
this is the same person, this isthe same business.

(01:08):
So that's how you're going tofix that inconsistent branding
is by putting your logo oneverything, and an easy way to
do this is just making atemplate through Canva and
making it where everyone in themarketing department or maybe
you're the marketing departmentyou can go on there and easily
like plug and play some pictureswith quotes and that kind of

(01:29):
thing.
So the first one is we want tobe consistent with our branding
across all platforms.
So let's not do that, guys.
Okay, I know you can.
The next one is this is likeone of my icks, I guess, of
marketing is this is like one ofmy icks, I guess, of marketing

(01:51):
poor photo quality or only usinggeneric stock photos.
I have a few clients that are indifferent states and so they I
will either have a professionalphotographer go out and take
pictures if that is in theirbudget, or I will show them how
to take pictures of their officeand their products and things
like that, or if they want us touse stock photos, that is a
very last, like last, thing thatI'm going to do for them.

(02:13):
I want to make sure everythingelse is crossed off first.
Now, if they are local here inArkansas to me, I or someone on
my team will go and take photosat their store or at their if
they have like a mechanic shopor if they're like hey, we just
did a roof on this house.
Can you like drive by get aphoto?
Yes, so that is a way that youcan fix the unprofessionalism of

(02:39):
poor quality photos.
That's just easily take outyour phone, snap a couple
pictures, like if you are outdoing, if you're a roofer, like
I just said, it's easy to snapsome photos of behind the scenes
of people working, or if you'rein an office, you can do like
office lunch together orsomething like that.
But we don't want to only usestock photos, because the

(02:59):
algorithm really hates that andalso social media is to be
social right, and so we want tomake sure that we are also being
social when it comes to likesharing who we are and behind
the scenes and things like that.
Okay, this one's a big one.
If you own a business, you needa freaking website.

(03:20):
Don't have a broken website.
Don't have a website that isnot mobile friendly.
You need to have a website.
So that's what makes you lookunprofessional.
If you don't have a website, Iwant you to have a website.
Even if it is a simple landingpage, you will be is golden,
because we are having a presenceon Google.

(03:41):
Someone has somewhere to go tocontact you, learn more about
you.
And then, most importantly, wenow have a place to do a call to
action for all of the socialmedia posts.
So we want to post on socialmedia and then point people
directly to your website andthey can find out more
information there.
So an easy way to fix that islike go to Wix, do a landing

(04:04):
page.
It's super cheap If you wannaactually budget in a marketing
agency to do it.
You're looking at like 2,500 to5,000, depending on what you
are wanting out of your websiteor how extensive you want this
website.
Just make sure it's mobilefriendly, because if it's not,
then it's really pointlessbecause we're literally all on

(04:24):
our phones all the time.
The next one is y'all this isfree.
So you should definitely havealready done this for your
business.
Missing Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile is 100%free for you to set up and if
you've been in business a longtime like I just had a client
that I took over all of theirmarketing stuff online, all the

(04:47):
digital stuff, and I saw thatthey had a Google business
profile but they did not own theprofile.
So I'll go on there and I'mlike, oh, manage this business.
So I automatically tookownership of the profile itself,
because nobody managed it atthe time and they've been in
business for so long that,before Google even had Google

(05:07):
Business Profile, it justautomatically updated and made
one for them.
So now I verified it, I'veadded photos, I've added the
website, the correct phonenumber.
So now that's what you need todo.
I mean literally, after youlisten to this podcast, I want
you to go to Google and I wantyou to create a Google business
profile.
You can literally Google Googlebusiness profile and it will

(05:28):
show you exactly how to do it,step by step, because it's going
to increase the views to yourwebsite.
It'll increase the views toyour social media and Google
will start to put you in the AIsummary stuff whenever people
are looking up your products.
The next one that makes you looka little unprofessional.
This is a little bit of an ickas well Selling too hard or

(05:52):
selling too much on social media.
Guys, social media is all aboutbeing social.
We want people to be engaged.
We do not want to do sell, sell, sell, sell.
No, we want to be educational.
We want to be fun, we want tobe engaging, we want to be

(06:13):
involved in the community.
We don't always want to beselling on social media because
if that's what we're doing,people are going to unfollow us.
They're going to to get boredwith us.
They're not going to reallycare about anything because
they're like well, all thesepeople want is like to sell me
their product.
They don't even care about,like what I'm doing.
And so if you're on socialmedia, you can go on there and

(06:35):
be social with other people, butthen make it more about the
people of your business, or moreabout the owner, or more about
the products, as in like how itsolves a problem.
Not hey, I want you to buy thisor hey, I want you to share
this, so that way your friendscan buy it.
Like no, we want to be moreeducational.
When I do my workshop, then it'sall my content.

(06:58):
Workshop is all about the fourtypes of content that we do, and
selling content is always thelast one.
And I say do a minimum of liketwo posts a month.
I'm sorry, a maximum of twoposts a month about selling your
product online, because we wantpeople to read everything else,
we want them to get to know us,we want to build that trust.

(07:20):
We want them to be comfortablewith the people that they're
buying stuff from, and then youcan hit them with a sell and you
can be a sell like.
You can sell things withouteven saying like hey, buy my
product.
You can sell things through areview post.
You can sell things through hey, check out this sign that I
just did this week.
And then people see it andyou've literally sold yourself

(07:42):
and didn't even know it.
So a few of these we're goingto go back through them and just
briefly here, because I like tokeep these short and sweet, so
that way you have actionableitems to go back and check off
for your business and start todo your marketing the right way.
So things that we are going towork on after today.
We want to be consistentlybranding ourselves across all

(08:05):
platforms.
So we want to make sure that wehave our logo on everything.
We have our Canva templates,the same color choice, the same
font, so it's a huge pet peeve.
We want to make sure that we'reusing really good photos.
Don't do any crappy genericstock photos on your social
media stuff, because people aregoing to see that and they're
not going to be like they'rejust going to keep scrolling.

(08:27):
It's not going to make themstop scrolling.
That's our point.
Then we have no website.
Guys.
We want to make sure that wehave a website that works and is
mobile friendly.
It can be so simple.
You don't have to be verycomplex with your first website
if you don't want to.
You can have a simple landingpage that gives people somewhere
to go to find out moreinformation about you and to

(08:48):
contact you.
Then we have our free Googlelisting profile.
So you need to go and do thatright now.
Upload your new Google businessprofile, make sure you verify
it, add everything to it.
Then you can upload photosmonthly on it or you can upload
your website on there.
People can leave you a reviewand Google just really looks at

(09:10):
you in a different light whenyou actually have a Google
business profile.
And the last one we talked aboutwas selling too hard and too
much on social media.
Just get back to the basis ofthat content.
What do you want to see onsocial media?
What do you like, like whatdraws you into business pages
and brands whenever they'reposting?
Take some of that and put itinto your own business and into

(09:32):
your own content.
And if you're listening to thisand you're like, hey, I really
need some help.
I don't think I'm doing itright.
I may be doing it right.
Then just message me.
You can go on my website, youcan send me a contact form and I
will do a free audit of yourbusiness and your website and
you can gather all thatinformation and then I can give
you some actionable steps totake to make your stuff look a

(09:54):
little bit better.
All right, guys, I will hollerat you on the next one.