When I talk to small businesses, the majority of questions focus around marketing. Many small firms think marketing is just sending out brochures and leaflets and that it has to cost a lot of money, but there are lots of low-cost ways to get your message across.
The first thing to do is to assess your existing offering through the eyes of a consumer. One entrepreneur explained all his marketing to me but I just could not understand what the business did.
His website was even worse. Everyone talks about search engine optimisation and pay-per-click marketing but that's no use if the message on your website isn't clear to customers. A lot of people are too close to the product and assume people know more about the business than they actually do.
Remembering who you're targeting is vital, too. I was with a business recently that had had a few big wins and got a bit too clever. The owner wanted to sell the product to third-party distributors but was actually trying to market it to consumers. Marketing should be simple but a lot of time is spent working on the creative side instead of the core values of what the message actually is.
The internet is an amazing tool for marketing. I've just started to use Twitter; it's great for content-refresh on my own website and generates leads and interest in your business. And it costs me nothing other than time. Sites like these are great but use them in a corporate way.
But many small businesses are not keeping up with the new ways of marketing. You have to walk along with your customer and if their buying cycle changes you have to go with them. At one place where I used to work we'd put a £10,000 advert in The Sun and it would generate 100 leads that we'd convert into about £3,500 worth of business per lead. In September last year I spent about £25,000 on something similar and it generated nothing.
Direct mail will only work if it contains a key message and goes direct to the decision-maker. But somebody else opens my post so it doesn't even reach me. It will go straight into the shredder or in the recycling bin. I'm not a big fan of radio advertising either but face-to-face marketing can be useful if you're trying to generate business on a regional scale.
But a lot of marketing is just good customer service. The cheapest source of marketing is your existing client base. I made one business that was on the brink of administration in June last year call every single customer that had ever dealt with them and ask them why they weren't buying any more. Most of the time it was a lack of contact; they'd done a good job but another company called them more often. In our business 80% comes from word of mouth, which is why I'm never dismissive of people I deal with because you never know who they're going to be speaking to.
Small companies need to exercise all the free options first and put half of any money they generate from this into other forms of marketing once the economy picks up. But make sure you have the fulfilment side sorted before you ramp up your marketing or you won't be able to deliver.
It's been proven that companies that market themselves during a recession come out of it stronger. And with the traditional summer slump now upon us, it's a great time to spend a bit of time assessing your marketing strategy.
For more information please visit www.ruthbadger.com
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