You are the ultimate small business owner. By day, you develop and offer amazing products or services to an appreciative audience. In the evenings, you manage the books, crunch budgets and learn about branding. Kudos to you!
So, how's your marketing strategy performing this year? How many leads have you converted into sales? Is your social presence getting stronger and influencing your ideal customers? If you're feeling a bit deflated, don't. Many small business owners need marketing help. They have more responsibilities to manage than ever imagined, and marketing often gets pushed to the back burner during a busy week. We get it.
Don't Be Afraid To Ask For Help!
You have no hesitation calling your accountant friend when a question pops up during tax season, or asking your buddy from college for software recommendations. If you're feeling confused and lost about your marketing efforts, it's OK to ask for help. And you really should if you're facing any of these milestones.
1. You Don't Have a Marketing Strategy
Some small businesses generate interest by cobbling together bits and pieces of marketing. They write a blog post occasionally, set up social media accounts, and purchase promotional items with their logo on it. This hope-and-see approach may give you a slight bump when initially launched, but just isn't effective long term.
Instead, eMarketer reminded us that marketing today is driven by technology, processes and organization. Not guesswork. It's important to sit down and develop an identity for your company, define your ideal customer, and clarify what success looks like. A marketing professional can lead you through this process. Commit to learning more about analyzing metrics, content distribution tactics and why you should consider multiple channels.
2. You Have a Big Promotion/Sale/Event Coming Up
Whether you're celebrating a grand opening, launching a new product, or kicking off a massive sale, you need to drum up awareness and interest in a strategic, cohesive way. Organic Facebook posts just won't cut it.
The communication pros at Buffer explained that event marketing done well engages potential customers before, during and after the event. Their research indicates that people tend to talk about events before they happen just as much as while they're happening, making that preemptive marketing messaging incredibly important for a successful event.
3. You Can't Measure Your ROI
So, you've read this far and are pretty happy that you do indeed have some sort of marketing plan in place, but realize it could be better. If that's the case, can you measure how well your campaigns are performing? Are you hitting business goals and branding benchmarks?
Embracing data and analytics makes you realize, in black and white, how well your marketing budget and tactics are actually working for your business. Target Marketing stated you "must focus on business results, measurable marketing contribution, and C-suite and cross-departmental relationships" to determine the bottom-line effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Ready to get another set of eyes on your ideas? If you need help developing a marketing strategy or simply adding fresh content to your current campaigns, reach out below and we'd be happy to partner you with a marketing professional from Local Solutions.
