New business owners in Indonesia often start marketing in the same way: being active on social media, creating daily content, running ads, and sometimes participating in bazaars or pop-ups. The activities seem busy, but the decisions that justify these activities are rarely questioned. Data from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs shows there are over 64 million MSMEs in Indonesia, many of which face similar challenges: difficulty in consistently attracting customers while competition continues to grow.
The pattern that often emerges is not a lack of effort. What is usually lacking is the discipline to formulate a marketing strategy before execution. Here are three common mistakes that make the marketing efforts of new businesses feel like they are going in circles.
1. Assuming Marketing Strategy is the Same as Campaigns or Content
Strategy is about decisions regarding who the target customers are, what position you want to hold in their minds, and the specific offers that make your business worth choosing. Campaigns and content are the execution of that strategy. When the order is reversed (execution first, strategy later), businesses become busy producing content that is not connected to long-term goals. Marketing Myopia, a classic term by Theodore Levitt in Harvard Business Review, precisely describes this condition: being too focused on products and activities, and not enough on what the market actually needs.
2. Never Seriously Mapping the Market
Before a marketing strategy is created, there is often a task that is overlooked: understanding the market through data. Careless SWOT analysis, guessed segmentation, and customer personas created based on personal assumptions are common patterns. In fact, the Bank Indonesia Consumer Survey regularly publishes data on consumer expectations and behaviors that can serve as a starting point for mapping. Without grounded data, the target market becomes just a label, not a decision that limits choices and focuses efforts.
3. Execution Not Aligned with Business Planning
A marketing strategy is not a separate document from the business plan. Marketing determines how products reach the market, while the business plan determines the capacity and margins that make it sustainable. When both are prepared separately, classic problems arise: successful campaigns attract leads but operations are not ready to serve, or products are released but there is no consistent distribution strategy. Businesses with well-structured strategies ensure these two documents refer to each other from the start.
Conclusion
The three patterns above are interconnected. Without a strategy built with discipline, marketing execution becomes a series of activities without direction, while the business plan runs on a parallel path that may clash with market realities. For business owners and professionals looking to structure their first marketing strategy, the Making Your First Marketing Strategy class at Taalenta discusses the foundational concepts of marketing strategy, the elements needed in planning, and how to align it with the business plan in three intensive sessions.
References
- Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs RI – Profile of Indonesian MSMEs → kemenkopukm.go.id
- Bank Indonesia – Consumer Survey → bi.go.id
- Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review – Marketing Myopia → hbr.org