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You’ve got a great team in place, and a great product or service to offer. Your customers are loyal and satisfied, and you’re confident they’re spreading the good word to their friends. If you’ve got everything running smoothly but are still struggling to bring in new business, chances are there’s room for improvement in your niche marketing.

Getting your message out to potential customers is essential to any marketing effort. But in a world where consumers divide their time among ever increasing media options — from still-popular TV and radio to online forums and social networks — finding the right customers for your business presents constant challenges. Here are the five areas where growing businesses most often trip up in their marketing efforts, along with tips on how to correct course.

1. Missing the target market. The Village Tavern, a family-owned restaurant and pub in North Wales, Pa., faces tough competition in its busy location just outside Philadelphia. But it saw huge growth in business by leaving the drive-through traffic to the chains and focusing on the local clientele.

   “We have to be different,” says John Modestine, the Village Tavern’s owner. “We put out the word about the fun part of our business. We put in a tiki bar, and we have alfresco dining, which the chain places around me don’t have.”

   “Your marketing can misfire if you don’t fully understand who buys from you, and, by extension, which messages appeal to them,” notes Roberta Guise, a marketing and PR consultant in San Francisco.

2. Failure to listen. Marketing is about getting your message out. But to send the right message it’s essential to listen to your customers and prospects.

   Guise cites the way two companies she worked with responded when customers complained about their responsiveness. Client No. 1, the president of an architectural engineering company, called her dissatisfied contact to smooth things over, and could see the customer had his own communications issues. In contrast, Guise’s other client, a commercial lighting designer, got defiant when customers said he was hard to reach. “I haven’t had contact with him in a while, and I can’t find his name or company through a Google search, so I would guess he’s no longer in the business,” she says.

   You don’t have to sit back and wait for feedback — actively seek it. “Have your customers participate in an online vote where you can capture their thoughts,” suggests Margo Berman, author of Street-Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz. “Participation is also a big way to build an emotional connection to a brand.”

3. Ineffective follow-up. For a smaller business that can’t afford saturation marketing, it’s essential to have a mechanism in place for connecting with customers and prospects. “We’ve found it’s things like database marketing and thank-you cards that increase frequency and also create word-of-mouth,” says Scott Anthony, a marketing consultant and owner of Fox’s Pizza Den in Punxsutawney, Pa.

   Offering a rewards program is one effective way to capture customer information. The Village Tavern uses an email service provider, Loyal Rewards, to manage its program, and Modestine says it’s a good investment for the time it saves. “We also use email marketing to get the word out,” he adds.
   

4. Steering search engine users to a generic home page. If someone types, for example, “student violin in Boston” into a search engine and your link delivers them to the home page of a full-service music shop, they might be overwhelmed even if you’re the best provider for what they need. That’s especially troublesome if you’re paying the search engines for every click-through. Simple changes, such as creating various page tops to match your keywords, can bring huge dividends.

5. To effectively use online tools like Google AdWords, determine the keywords that are the best fit for your business, and create dedicated landing pages that demonstrate your expertise in the areas most directly related to those keywords. These pages should share the look and feel of your branding, include specific calls to action, and provide links that move prospects through your Web site. You can even include promotional giveaways, such as white papers and discount coupons.

6. Inconsistent messages across different channels. The big companies always present a consistent message — think of the “Got Milk?” and “Just Do It” campaigns. Your company might not have as wide a reach, but the principle is still the same. “Consistent messages prompt people to act,” Anthony points out. “Changing your offers too frequently confuses the consumer, let alone your employees.”