As a small business you are in a unique, but difficult, position in terms of marketing your business. Unique because of the potential you have to reach out to your customer base through close proximity. Difficult because you probably aren’t a marketer and it’s likely you don’t have the funds to pay someone to do your marketing for you. So, how can you give your small business the marketing workout it needs?
What Are Your Choices?
If you are a micro, solo or side hustle business your choices are often limited to:
- Do your own marketing
- Do no marketing at all
If you choose the second option – good luck! If you choose the first option, you will have to flex your marketing muscles and develop a set of skills that will need constant updating and review if you want to stop your promotional activities from becoming flabby.
To help you create a lean, mean marketing machine here is a set of small business marketing workout essentials that, if followed, can really keep your business fit and healthy.
The Warm-Up: Micro Business Marketing 101
What most small business owners (who aren’t marketers) describe as marketing is actually promotion: sending a message to an identified group of people in order to get them to take action.
Therefore, every promotional activity you undertake to promote your products or services – website, SEO, email, Facebook, going to a trade show, public speaking etc. etc. should be about:
- pushing out a message to an identified group (your target customers) in order to …
- pull those people closer and encourage them to respond to your call to action
The tools may differ, but the outcome should be the same.
This is a problem I have outlined and covered in a number of previous blogs. Here I want to focus on how I would approach this as your Engagement Marketing Personal Trainer to ensure your marketing activity is agile and building marketing muscle.
Here’s your four-step routine.
Aerobic: Speed Up Your Marketing by Really Getting to Know Your Customers
Finding and knowing your audience is the hardest part of any marketing activity because none of us offer anything that 1,000, or maybe 100,000, other businesses aren’t offering.
As ultra-small businesses we are in a highly competitive market. For example, if you go to a large networking meeting it’s very likely that you will meet multiples of people offering the same or similar products; how do you differentiate between them? How do potential customers differentiate between them?
To flex your competitive muscles and attract the customers you want you have to take time and dig deep to find that element within your offer that answers the needs of a specific group of people.
Strength: Flex Your Muscles and Do Something to Get Your Audience’s Attention
The next thing you have to do is grab your audience’s attention. This is where promotional activity comes in.
A marketing campaign promotes a very specific product or service, this is something I go into detail about in my book, The Big Social Media Marketing Organiser
Here’s an example
A financial adviser may run an advertisement that targets start-up micro-businesses within a particular sector who find it hard to get finance to get their business off the ground.
They would use a combination of activities, with a strong call to action, specifically designed to grab the attention of that particular group of people.
In any campaign, if the audience is not specific enough or the call to action is not strong enough there will be limited success.
Stretch: Maintain Your Flexibility and Get Them to Come Back for More
Once your target audience has taken you up on your offer, you need to do something to encourage them to come back.
Why do you want customers coming back?
Well, it’s a lot cheaper and they spend more.
It’s about seven times more expensive to get a new customer than it is to get somebody to buy from you again. When a customer comes back, and they buy a second time, on average, they spend 70% more than they did the first time
New customers often like to put their toe in the water with a new supplier, they don’t necessarily splurge with their first purchase, but they may the next time. We are looking to implement a repetitive exercise:
- We get their attention – we make them an offer – they buy – they come back for more.
- We get their attention – we make them an offer – they buy – they come back for more.
Balance: Create Stability with The Know-Like-Trust Cycle
In order for any customer to want to part with their hard-earned money, they have to trust the supplier.
Customers will not trust your business until they feel they know more about you. Once they get to know you – hopefully – they will decide they like you. It’s not until that happens they will trust you.
Customers can get to know and like a product really quickly.
If a cupcake tastes nice, they’re likely to buy another one. However, if you have a service-based businesses your consumers can be more wary.
Many of us have had the experience of being let down by these types of businesses, so trust is harder to establish.
Therefore, it is essential for all small businesses to maintain up to date and relevant information about themselves and their products and services – as well as on-line trust marks, such as testimonials and reviews– to allow potential customers to make the leap from know to like to trust to buy.
The Cool Down: Next Steps
If you have been struggling to get your marketing fit for purpose, why not book a Breakthrough Session with me? We can chat and I can put you through your paces so you’re fit, ready and raring to go!