As Queensland Small Business Month kicks off, we’re sharing our go-to marketing tips to help fellow entrepreneurs, go-getters, and business owners achieve lasting success.
Whether your business has been operating for a few years or a few decades, one sure thing is that having a reliable, scalable marketing system will deliver results to you and your business time and time again.
So, let’s get stuck in:
Crafting the perfect message
Logic makes you think, and emotion makes you act.
With that in mind, it’s crucial to identify and understand your customers’ emotional triggers. And even more importantly, you need to demonstrate how your product or service satisfies that need.
Those who have attended our workshops will know we firmly believe in the intrinsic link between psychology and great marketing.
A more simplistic view is understanding that everyone has pain points and desires.
Crafting messages (visual and verbal) that resonate with your customers’ pains or gains is vital.
One campaign = one objective
Businesses spread themselves too thinly. It’s common to see campaigns by local companies where they either need a clear message or are trying to do too much.
Small businesses should focus on generating leads, increasing sales, or nurturing relationships (retention) as they are more likely to achieve sustainable growth.
Having one clear goal for each marketing piece helps you create a more compelling message that resonates with your audience, get the most out of your budget, and measure success more accurately.
Test and keep the best
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
This famous quote from John Wanamaker is over a century old and, while still frequently used, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Marketing is as much about measuring and optimising as it is about creating and launching. Meaning that once a campaign is live, you are only halfway through the project.
You’re missing out if you or your agency still need to identify the most influential creative, message, media and audience for your marketing campaigns.
You must identify how much it costs to generate a sale or a quality lead. This will ensure you have a scalable marketing system you can rely on.
Grow your database or CRM
Just 3% of your audience is ready to buy. A further 50 to 60% will never be your customers. But that leaves up to 37% of your campaign’s audience open to becoming customers in the future.
If you have no database or CRM system or method for capturing the details of those interested in your products or services, then you need to take action.
Free consultations, prize draws, online quizzes, or subscriptions are valuable methods for incentivising those who wish to buy from you to give you their contact details.
Experience matters
Whether you are considering your customers’ encounters when buying from your business, or browsing your website, experience matters.
People’s greatest asset is time, so they don’t feel compelled to buy from a business that wastes it.
Sounds obvious. However, most websites take forever to load or are painful to use on a mobile.
Our data shows the impact on sales or leads from a slow, buggy website. Anything over 3 seconds (and that’s generous) is killing your chances of capturing new business.
Nurture Prospects
It takes six to eight marketing touchpoints to generate a sales lead.
With that in mind, your marketing should not rely on one channel or campaign to do the heavy lifting.
While six or even eight sounds like a lot of effort, you would be surprised at how easy it is to reach that goal.
From personal thank-you notes or calls, special introductory offers, useful blogs, or podcasts to free-discovery calls and direct mail, you can easily add value to your new contact while building the relationship.
Surround yourself with experts
Marketing is the Swiss Army knife of the business world. But that doesn’t mean you should expect one person to be able to do everything.
When choosing a marketing partner, you need a broad range of skills; copywriting, media buying, designing, videography, photography, social media strategy, web design, automation and online advertising.
The list goes on.
Fortunately, we know an agency that can help you with all of that. 😉
