Sales are usually the main focus of small businesses, after all, it is sales that generate income, right? But, all business start by defining a product or service they are planning to offer, and most business owners either believe they are offering something unique, filling a gap in the market or they are servicing customer needs better than those currently operating. This is marketing!
So when product/service design is at the root of all businesses why is marketing and marketing strategy so quickly overlooked? Those businesses that work on their brand strategy and support it with a marketing strategy will ultimately find income will follow pretty quickly. In my experience sales team heads far outweigh marketing heads, and that is fine, as long as the strategy has been done in advance.
Many small businesses will hire an agency to help them craft and define their branding and marketing strategies. Agencies are expensive, fact! They have to recover their overheads just as other businesses do and those costs are passed onto clients through their pricing strategy.
To help you avoid huge agency costs I have outlined my top tips for small businesses who understand the value of marketing and want to make a start themselves.
1. Identify your target audience
Knowing your audience is key. Knowing who you are targeting is fundamental to both brand and marketing strategy.
Male, over 70 years old, married twice, born in the UK, wealthy and famous includes both Ozzy Osbourne and King Charles III. Demographic and social-economic factors alone will not suffice. You need to understand your customer intimately (and this applies business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer). You need to know their thoughts and emotions. Seek to understand their values, what motivates them, what they find frustrating, what triggers them to act and so forth. The more you understand your audience the easier marketing will be.
2. Define your brand
Build a brand that appeals to your target customer. Invest time in defining your brand positioning and values and ensure these are aligned with your target audience. Be clear on what you are and what you are not. Ensure you have your brand pitch/story articulated in a simple and easy-to-understand way (this is often your customer value proposition or brand statement). Ensure everyone within your organisation knows what your brand is all about, and behaves in a way that reflects it.
3. Create an iconic identity
Once you know your target customer and you have defined your brand, bring it to life, in a unique and distinctive way. Yes, you will probably need to enlist the help of a designer, but there are many skilled freelancers who can help you.
Ideally, you want to develop distinctive visual assets that you can own. Think the McDonald's arches “m”, the Heinz tombstone, the Nike tick. I appreciate these examples are all from mega brands but all mega brands started somewhere hey! and having distinctive brand assets helps significantly.
4. Don’t undervalue desk research
Data is invaluable to marketers. Marketers continuously seek knowledge, stats/data, forecasts and insights to help inform decision-making and build strategies upon. Big businesses have deep pockets and can purchase data and commission comprehensive research, to satisfy their knowledge requirements. But sometimes too much data leads to paralysis, and unless you have skilled insights personnel or analysts finding the “so what” can often be harder than anticipated.
Having worked with many entrepreneurs over the years, most have a similar ethos when it comes to data and insights “You often just have to follow your gut and progress with the information you have. If we wait until everything is known or perfect, we will never make progress”.
So although data is important, it shouldn’t hinder small business decision-making, use what is already available and accessible, and add your own interpretation.
Remember, quality often trumps quantity.
5. Have a clear marketing strategy
A strategy provides direction and a framework for decision-making. Having a clear marketing strategy is key for small businesses, helping them allocate their often-limited resources, and providing a barometer of performance and progress towards achieving objectives and goals.
6. Manage the tactical mix
Brand building and sales activation; two sides of the tactical marketing coin. Brand building is a long-term strategy to build a relationship or emotional connection with the target and takes time and consistency. Sales activation is short-term and aims to trigger purchases. Your marketing plan should include tactics that support the long and the short. For smaller businesses, the weighting is likely to be more towards sales activation, initially. But failure to support the brand will be detrimental to long-term success.
7. Build an online presence
We cannot escape the fact we are living in a digital age. Technology including AI is advancing daily. Social media is buoyant and evolving. Just last month we saw the launch of Thread, yet another social platform.
Different platforms attract different audiences. Audiences use platforms very differently. Although you cannot escape needing to have a digital presence, and likely a social presence, be choiceful about the role digital will play. Be selective in your social strategy. Copy and pasting the same content on multiple social platforms will not yield. For small businesses, it is super important to be selective with social, clearly defining which platforms to use, for what purpose and against what goal.
8. Content is important
Content reinforces the brand, attracts the target and supports reach by leveraging algorithms. Producing high-quality, relevant content that interests and engages your audience will pull your target towards you. Producing regular content that appeals to your target will also support your organic search engine optimisation (SEO), helping more of your target find you instead of you having to invest to find them.
Small businesses should invest in creating on-brand, target-orientated content in a variety of formats; social posts, blogs, eMarketing emails and newsletters, videos, infographics, white papers and so forth. Just keep the target at the heart of your content. Ask yourself; am I delivering value?
9. Reviews and testimonies
People buy from people. We buy from those we trust. Give your brand a personality (be relatable), build a relationship with your target by being consistent in how you show up and be credible and evidenced; how you do this will differ by sector. For some, this might be obtaining and promoting Trustpilot, Feefo, Amazon or Google reviews and scores. For others, it might be achieving industry or category awards; Product of the Year, a Great Taste star or Check A Trader reviews. Understand what accreditations your target respect and are influenced by. If accreditation is obtained, then leverage it. This is where public relations (PR) comes into play.
Handle negative feedback, positively. Sadly, the majority of us are more likely to leave negative feedback when we feel bereft than leave positive feedback when we feel satisfied. How you respond to negative feedback is just as important as how you respond to positive. Accept feedback and optimise customer services to find a resolution. Keep your brand reputation in mind at all times.
10. Embrace opportunities and experiment
Needs change, societies evolve and technology advantages. Keep on top of trends. Small businesses are typically agile, they can react smartly and fast to market dynamics. Depending on who is at the helm, small businesses can be less risk-averse than conglomerates.
As a small business, be brave, be edgy, be challenging, try new things, and push the boundaries to get noticed. Try, learn and progress.
11. Measure
Having defined your objectives in your marketing strategy, ensure you have a measurement scorecard. Decide what you want to measure, know why you are measuring it, how you are measuring it, the source of the measurement and the frequency. Then develop the procedure for reviewing performance and define the measurement thresholds that may influence a review or adjustment to the current plan.
Marketing can play a significant role in the speed and degree of the growth of small businesses. Having a strategic framework for the brand and a concise marketing plan provides the foundation for commercial success.
Small and fledging businesses should know their target inside out, and build a differentiated and distinguished proposition that they communicate simply and concisely. They should seek to over-service customers by anticipating needs. They should be choiceful with technology but look to optimise what they use. Make bold creative statements in inexpensive ways with consistency and integrity.