It’s safe to say that most food truck vendors don’t like to admit to being wrong. Over the last few weeks we asked some food truck owners to send us examples of marketing tactics they’ve tried that ended up failing miserably. We received a lot of great responses, and we noticed many of them were similar. Today we’ll discuss three of the most marketing failures these respondents submitted.

3 Marketing Failures Food Truck Vendors Should Avoid

Non-Targeting Marketing

Too much marketing communication and too little targeting was the number one marketing failure food truck vendors shared. Also known as, “spray and pray” or shotgun marketing, if the demographic you’re targeting is too large, it’s much harder to determine who truly needs food truck menu or service and who is not a good fit.

You have to find a way to target the exact type of person you want to speak to. If you find people who already want what you have to offer, there’s no need to convince them, because they already want it.

RELATED: How To Determine Your Food Truck Target Market

Counting Too Much On Word Of Mouth

You just launched your food truck business. You’ve been slaving away for months creating a menu that you’re genuinely proud of, and you know people are just going to love it. Before I continue, let me say, that I’m a huge fan of word-of-mouth marketing. In some cases, it can work. But most of the time, it doesn’t.

Instead of depending on your family, friends and acquaintances to spread public awareness of your food truck, build a community. This community should be people who are on-board with your plans, love your food and have been “trained” to share your plans and menu through constant interaction.

Relying On Facebook Ads

Are you in the mood to waste a ton of money to get little or no results? If you are, go ahead and start buying Facebook ads. This was close to the top of the shared marketing failures by food truck vendors. To be honest, it’s not that Facebook ads don’t work. They certainly can, and have worked for many businesses. The problem with Facebook ads is making the artwork, tweaking all the settings, finding the right audience and then determining your return on investment all take a long time to master.

Unless you’re a pro or have a team monitoring your ads, it’s going to be very hard to get good results. Facebook ads take a lot of work to manage. Instead, if you’re just starting off with your food truck, learn how to optimize your social media networks and regularly connect with your followers.

The Bottom Line

The essence of marketing is to understand your food truck customers’ needs and develop a plan that surrounds those needs. Let’s face it anyone that has a mobile food business has a desire to grow their business. As you can see from these common marketing failures, the most effective way to grow and expand your food truck business is by focusing on organic growth.

Would you like to share a marketing failure you’ve learned from? Post your thoughts in the comment section or on social media. Facebook | Twitter