As consumers, when we engage with say a financial planner we always talk to them about investments and the return investment on the money that you're putting in. So, when we talk marketing then it is exactly the same for your small business.

You are investing time, money, energy and skills into your business from a marketing perspective and you also then want to be able to measure your return on investment. So it's critical that small business owners think about marketing purely from an investment perspective, rather than a spend perspective.

A spend for me tells me that you're not getting any return whereas when we talk about marketing it's an investment in those four key areas of time, money, energy and skills to make sure that it’s benefiting your business over a period of time.

Now unlike working with a financial planner, it's a long game. Like with property, like shares. Whereas in marketing I'd like to think working with our clients, that within kind of 6 months to a year, they're going to start to see some momentum and change, based on the investment that they've made and as long as we're working together with a structured approach and a structured plan then the results should be there.

Here’s how to not waste another marketing dollar

In front of me I have three summaries of three different small business clients that we work with and these documents are from the initial discovery call that we have with our clients, to see if we're a good fit and to see if we're able to help and work together.

One of the questions we ask our clients, like any other service business should be asking whether they're a financial planner, an accountant or even a fitness trainer, is what outcome are you looking for in working with Little Marketing.

Now, if I look at the answers that people give, it says a lot about the pain points in small business so don't feel like as a small business owner that you are alone.

So let's look at the outcomes that they feel like they wanted from Little Marketing. First one here, we've got that they wanted a marketing plan, they wanted consistency in the work that that comes through for them and they wanted general marketing advice, that's the first one.

Second one talks about wanting to be top of mind with their customers and clients, lots of guidance along the way and then thinking about where should they best invest their marketing dollars. Then the third one is about making sure that again they want a structured marketing plan, so structure is a big one because we know small business owners lack time, so by having structure you eliminate wastage in time.

They want their marketing to be measured which it should absolutely be and they want healthy profits along the way. So you can see there's a lot of common things, no real surprises it's about structure. It's about results, it's about guidance and it's about advice.

Now as small business owners, you are great at what you do but it's about getting the guidance that you need and these three examples are examples of great clients that we work with we work in a measured approach, to make sure that we're getting those outcomes that we spoke about in the very first meeting. It should always come down to objectives and that's why your marketing and your marketing approach should come down to your objectives and what works best for you

The team here at Little Marketing have been working with small business owners for over 16 years and helping them in this approach. If you're looking for a consultative approach to your small business marketing, then speak with our team today.