You may not have the spending power and resources of the marketers at the top end of town, but you can (and should!) adopt their big picture mindset. Here’s how.
“Even the most captivating marketing material in the world won’t make your cash register ring if it’s not seen by the right people – and enough of them.”
1. Know your objectives
Too often small businesses take a scattergun approach to marketing. They try things because it worked for a friend, or because they saw it in a webinar. On the other hand, it’s very rare for a big business marketer to do anything without first knowing their objectives. Getting into the habit of asking ‘What do I want to achieve?’ before embarking on any form of marketing leads to good strategic decision making about:- The type of marketing activity and messages you need,
- The optimal times and places for the material you create to appear, and
- The amount of money its worth spending to reach your goal.
2. Play the long game
In a corporate environment, most marketing plans are built out at least three to six months before the start of the financial year in which the activity will take place and include an indication of the money and resources required to execute them. In contrast, few small business owners I speak to take a long-range view of their marketing activity. Most look only at the immediate future, or have a vague idea about what they plan to do a month or two ahead. Many others operate on a feast or famine mentality, only marketing when they’re getting nervous about sales, or when they suddenly find themselves with time or money on their hands. There are numerous pitfalls to this ad hoc approach to marketing, but chief among them is that its rarely a good use of your time or money, and doesn’t result in a cohesive set of marketing assets targeted at achieving your business objectives.3. Ensure you’re reaching the right people
Cash-strapped small business owners naturally gravitate towards marketing activity that’s easily affordable. Which means social media, blogging and email newsletters tend to be at the core of our marketing efforts. Those strategies are great, but even the most captivating marketing material in the world won’t make your cash register ring if it’s not seen by the right people – and enough of them. If you’re putting lots of time into creating fabulous marketing content but are not getting the results that investment deserves, perhaps it’s because your existing audience is too small or not targeted enough. That’s why big business marketers invest as much (if not more) time and money in ensuring their marketing material reaches the right audience as they do in its creation. You can take a leaf out of their book by investing a small amount of money in some highly targeted social media advertising and monitoring the results.4. Leverage the halo effect
If you offer a range of products or services, it’s important to determine which are best to invest your time and/or money to promote. In big business marketing, this is done by analysing sales results to determine:- Which existing products are doing well (and may do even better with a bigger push),
- Which are under-performing compared to their potential, and
- Where there are new opportunities that are worth investing in.