If you’re starting a new business, or maybe you’re looking to expand your client base and find some new sources of revenue, no doubt you’ve been told more than once that you “need to do some marketing”.
It’s true, you probably do. Using marketing activities to increase your exposure and make you and your company more visible to prospective clients is very important. But marketing alone is not the silver bullet.
Get the basics right
For marketing to be successful you need a solid base from which to launch. You must clearly identify your target customers, have a realistic budget (because you will have to invest at least some money into it!) and develop clear goals that you want your marketing activities to achieve.
It’s about marketing to the right people, with the right message, at the right time.
Don’t just jump straight in
OK, so that’s the theory part, but how do you actually put this into practice?
What do you need to consider before you spend money on marketing? How do you identify potential customers you think will respond? And how do you know how much you should spend?
So many questions…suddenly seems like it’s getting too hard. Don’t worry. It’s not.
Here are some essentials steps I recommend you take before embarking upon your small business marketing activities.
6 essential steps to good small business marketing
1. Do your research
Understand the market you’re operating in
There are many ways you can do this. The expensive way is to employ a market research company to carry out the research for you, conducting focus groups, talking directly to clients and competitors. But as a small business this is probably over the top.
You could also look at purchasing some syndicated research. This is typically a research study which is carried out by a market research company, but not for any specific client. You can buy the results, which may be a report, presentation or even raw data.
By far the simplest way is to do your own research though is to look at the wide range of sources you have available to you. Depending on the size and type of your business, you may have sales people who interact with customers on a daily basis. This will be your best source of knowledge – the people who live and breathe your business day in and day out, talking to the people who use your products or services.
With some good thought and structure to the interactions you should be able to gain some fantastic insights into what your customers think, how they compare you to your competitors, what alternatives they perceive are available, what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Even if you don’t have people on the ground interacting with customers every day, you can still carry out your own research.
- Use your customer reviews and testimonials.
- Look at your competitors’ websites and social media site to see how they promote themselves and what others say about them.
- Email a short survey to your database. Offering an incentive to answer always helps!
- Do some secret shopping (or ask your friends to do it) and see how your competitors respond to different enquiries.
- Research current trends in your industry, both in Australia and overseas if that’s relevant.
Once you have this information about the environment you’re operating in, your competitors and how you’re perceived, you can start thinking about where marketing might be most effective.
2. Know your customer
If you want your marketing to reach the right people, you need to know who those people are. Even just a basic demographic profile is a good starting point, although it’s worth noting not all of these will be relevant to your business. It will help you determine “segments” in your overall customer population, which you can then use to create a picture of the characteristics of a typical member of each of these segments.
- Age / Generation group
- Gender
- Location
- Income and investments
- Education level
- Ethnicity
- Religion
Such information is helpful when later deciding whether you can reach them through advertising, direct mail, conferences, online, email marketing etc.
3. Identify your unique selling proposition
What makes you different? What do you do that none of your competitors do?
This may sound simple but so many businesses often fail to really understand what their true uniqueness is. If you’re lucky you could be first to market with an innovative idea that no-one else has thought have. And in that case, it’s obvious what your unique selling proposition is.
But most businesses operate in saturated markets where there are lots of “me too” brands and products offering something very similar to them. It’s here that marketing can really give you the edge, IF and only IF, you can identify how you are different. Here’s a few ideas that could apply to you…
- Number of products / services your offer (breadth)
- Expertise of your people (skills)
- Level of market awareness (brand reputation)
- Specialism / tailored products (niche)
- Time in the market (experience)
4. Give your business a personality
If you want to communicate with your customers in an authentic way, you need to develop a consistent way to do this.
Think about yourself – how do you build relationships with people? It’s through trust and reliability. Your family or friends know who you are, what you believe in, what you like and don’t like etc. They know if you’re a talkative person or someone who likes their peace and quiet.
While it might seem strange to think about your business like this, it’s a critical step in building authenticity and trust with your customers. Your business’ personality will be defined by the way you say things and the impression it makes on those you communicate with. It can position you as a trusted source of information and generate rapport.
Consider the following.
- If your business was a person, who would it be?
- What is your tone of voice – conversational / formal / inspirational / funny?
- What hobbies would your business enjoy?
These things help to create the right persona for your business, so whenever you communicate with your customers, they meet this “person”.
5. Have SMART goals
If you’re not measuring your marketing activities how do you know if they are successful? How will you know if the time and money you’re spending is worth it? And importantly, how do you know what to do more of and what to stop?
It’s a good idea to use the SMART approach to setting your goals as this ensures you’re measuring something that’s actionable.
- Specific (simple, sensible, significant
- Measurable (meaningful, motivating)
- Achievable (agreed, attainable)
- Relevant (reasonable, results-based)
- Time bound (time-based, time-sensitive)
Can you identify which of these goals is SMART?
- Use blog posts to increase website traffic to 1,000 visitors per month by 31 December.
- Add new content to the website to get more visitors.
6. Create a marketing plan…with a budget
Armed with all this information, you’re now ready to start thinking about how marketing can work for your business.
By understanding your market environment, your competitors, your strengths and your customers, you should be able to decide how you want to position your business, and what you want to talk to your customers about. In many cases, it’s quite a logical next step to work out which marketing tools will be best suited to do this.
For example, there will be little value in using social media if your customers are aged over 70 as it’s not likely to reach enough of the segment. Or if you don’t yet have a good customer database then email marketing isn’t an option for you. Similarly, if your budget is $5,000 then a sustained advertising campaign probably isn’t going to be realistic.
But there are marketing tools for any budget – just keep in mind those SMART goals and be honest about what you want to achieve.
- Build a website…and use it
- Be active on social media
- Develop printed material – brochures and flyers
- Create regular newsletters (email or printed)
- Use email marketing
- Write content to share, such as blogs
- Employ targeted placement of articles
- Attend or run events
- Send direct mail
- Plan an advertising campaign (online or printed)
- Build strategic partnerships / alliances
- Join industry associations to build networks
So now you’re ready…let’s go and “do some marketing”!
If you think I might be able to help you with anything mentioned in this article, let me know.