At Little Marketing, we often speak with small business owners who have had a crack at doing their own marketing. From the strategy side in terms of thinking about how they’re different to the competition to the actual execution and the activity side of getting their business and their brand out there.
When we talk to them, there’s lots of frustrations about them not seeing any results either in the short, medium or long term and I can see the frustration from the small business owners because they’ve invested so much time, money, energy and skills into their marketing and into their business.
Quite often, it’s sometimes just the little tweaks that need to happen to make your marketing more effective. Let’s talk about the messaging, the messaging is talking about really clearly who your audience is, how you help them and what you do and why you’re different to the competition.
You need to make sure that your messaging is really clear and communicating that in a simple and clear way. Consumers and client’s don’t have time to absorb information, figure out clever messages, you just need to be super obvious about what you do, who you help and where you help them and why you’re different.
Then when it comes to the actual execution of the activity, like setting up Google ads or an email campaign, you need to make sure that that messaging is clear across all of those elements as well as making sure that the imagery backs up that message.
Maybe spend some time, do a bit of an audit about what you’re doing, put yourself in your consumers and clients shoes, think about what do they need to read or see to feel like it’s a needs match for them and keep tweaking and keep evolving your marketing.
How to make simple money for your small business
I spoke to a friend who owns a florist, during the week of Valentine’s day, and you can imagine it’s the busiest time of year for them. She’s been open for about 4 years and I asked her whether she’s been collating the email addresses and phone numbers of the clients and customers she’s had over the last 4 years.
The answer she gave me was no. Now that’s a scary thought, given that at a time like Valentine’s Day you want to be able to be top of mind with your audience to communicate your offering.
Consumers have so many options to be able to order flowers during Valentine’s week, but if you’ve not been top of mind throughout the year in the leadup to Valentine’s Day or any type of occasion, then the chances that them coming back to you on Valentine’s Day is probably small.
Let’s be honest, there would be a lot of people who would love to receive flowers at any time through the year, not just on Valentine’s Day. So if she’s able to communicate on a regular basis, whether it’s monthly, weekly, whatever it might be, it’s about being top of mind with what you do, your offering and how you help people.
So when the time comes for people to want to buy what it is that you’re selling, you have a higher chance of them buying from you if you’ve been top of mind on a regular basis.