Marketing for Small Businesses
Whether you own a small business or a big one – you need marketing. As the saying goes; “No customers, equals No Business” and in order to pull in more customers, it’s essential that we have a marketing plan (or at least a strategy) in place.
What is Marketing
The Marketing Puzzle: First we just need to remember that marketing isn’t just about advertising, and that advertising is simply a part of the marketing puzzle. They’re both essential in business for pulling in more customers, to grow and most importantly, to increase profits.
Marketing happens every day around us – from the simplest form of you trying to convince your friends or family to dine at a specific restaurant to a poster promoting a special offer in a mall. All of this requires and uses marketing.
Marketing is a major business function that involves online/offline marketing activities such as advertising, PR, market research, social media content, SEO/SEM (search engine marketing or optimisation), email marketing as well as the marketing mix fundamentals (ie. Product, Pricing, Placement and Promotion).
Why Your Business Needs It
The bottom line is: Marketing increases YOUR bottom line. It basically helps your business gain new and maintain existing customers, plus it also helps to…
- Increase Customer Loyalty with Frequent Communication
- Engage the Customer at Every Buying Stage
- Target the Right Audience
- Generate a Consistent Lead Pipeline
- Optimise and Obtain Better Conversion Rates
- Measure All Results
- Gain Brand Credibility
Good Marketing Wins Customers
Good products may sell, but good marketing wins
(long-term, repeat) customers.
Marketing Is All About Communication
If you own a small business, you know that everyone seems to be competing for attention, and it’s difficult to stand out amongst the crowd.
For many solo-preneurs or small business owners, handling the whole marketing aspect of the business can be quite challenging and overwhelming at times.
So, let’s make marketing easier to digest. In essence, marketing is all about communicating and connecting with your audience (potential and existing customers).
It’s about understanding…
- your audience’s pains
- their problems
- their frustrations and
- finding ways to address those issues
- and making them feel understood.
This is important because it helps you position your business as the solution to their problems and essentially your solution can make them feel better.
Those who’ve been in business for some time would agree that it’s not always the best product or service that wins, in fact it rarely is. Rather it’s the product or service with the best marketing. Like it or not, that’s just how it works and that’s why having good marketing is just so important.
There is no Magic Marketing
When it comes to marketing, there is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all. The goal of marketing is to connect the value of your company to the right customer base. It's a simple idea with so many different variations.
Communicating value to customers
Use marketing to create and give value to your audience – for example, writing a blog content filled with a blog with useful and helpful information (even before you start promoting your product).
Communicate a message that ‘will benefit’ the audience… whatever information you give, it must have that “what’s in it for them” value.
We Think Logically, But We Buy Emotionally
Economics assumes that people make buying decisions rationally, logically and with perfect information, but this is rarely the case. Humans are emotional and quite often (although we don’t want to admit it), we are illogical when making any decision. That is why marketing can become powerful when we know how to leverage on natural human emotions.
After all, if we made all of our purchasing decisions based solely on logic, utility and the value we would get from products – then the entire luxury goods market wouldn’t even exist.
Good Marketing or Bad Marketing?
Basically bad marketing gives marketing a bad rap. This includes hypey, spammy, over-the-top sleazy, pushy and salesy kinds of marketing. We’ve all seen those – and it devalues the product or service, making them seem cheap (and tacky).
Good marketing, on the other hand, helps customers achieve their goals, makes them feel better about themselves and has the power to truly change the world.
What's Your Marketing Strategy?
You’re the best person who knows YOUR business and YOUR customers. By knowing the answers to these questions, you’d be able to determine which marketing strategies will be viable and which will be a waste of time.
- What demographics make up your customer base?
- Where do they live?
- Where do they hang out online?
- How do they look for products in your niche?
- Who do they listen to when making decisions relative to your product?
You’re the best person
You’re the best person who knows YOUR business and YOUR customers.
Still not sure? We offer affordable help to small business owners. We’d be happy to help you plan a marketing strategy for your business.
