TheStreet.com looks at four marketing mistakes that many small businesses make when they try to get the word out about their products and services.

At the top of the list, don’t blow your entire marketing wad right out of the gate:

More often than not, small businesses will pour tons of start-up capital into their marketing campaigns at launch. While there’s logic to this (how will you attract customers if no one knows you’re out there?), business owners who spend their entire marketing budget on a launch set themselves up to fail in the long run. Why? Because marketing is a never-ending process. You can’t stop advertising once the money runs it. Well, you can, but that would be a waste of the capital you spent.

“People see and receive so much advertising that the one-time marketing tactic is no longer effective,” Peter Geisheker, CEO of The Geisheker Group Marketing firm, explains. “A prospective customer may need to see your advertisement seven to twelve times or more over a period of several months or even a year before they will buy from you.”

Additionally, once you get them in the door, you’ll have to work to keep them there. Take giant chains, like Wal-Mart or McDonald’s as examples, who have already established brand loyalty, but haven’t ceased all ad campaigns. They know that marketing is not a one-off; out of sight means out of mind. Of course, small businesses don’t generate the cash flow that giant corporations do (if they did, they would no longer be a small business, would they?). However, small establishments can afford protracted advertising. They just need to identify their target audience.

Read the entire article here.