Small business marketing is one of those tasks that you tend to push aside as other more pressing tasks rear their ugly head and take over. It’s easy to put marketing off for another day but not business wise.
So without wasting any time, let’s get into my 5 tips to make time for marketing -
Uncomplicate it
1. Uncomplicate it
A lot of the time, your small business marketing morphs into something that is complicated. Too many irons in the fire, as they say. Now may be time to pull the plug on many of your marketing activities.
It’s time to get brutal. Is there something you just hate doing or really don’t have the skills – I give you permission to ditch it.
A client of mine, let’s call him Mikey, was trying to do weekly videos. However, week after week, he found that he kept putting them off because he never had the time and the task was too daunting. The process of writing the content, practising umpteen times, the filming of the video with sooo many takes to get it perfect, then publishing it on his website and social media was exhausting.
Just the thought of producing the videos was causing him stress. And he was producing nothing.
He needed to uncomplicate it, quick smart!
We discussed his desire to get in front of his clients every week, so I came up with a plan for him to create easy videos and I even found the time for him to do it!
My plan was for him to create an ‘off the cuff video’ of up to one minute, every Monday morning on his way to work while he was waiting for his morning coffee! He was fresh on a Monday, he was happy as he was getting his coffee, and his head was exploding with new ideas for the video content.
The results. His clients loved his weekly messages and started looking forward to hearing from him every week, AND best of all, he was able to attribute extra sales to these videos.
The Bonus. He felt accomplished as he had completed his marketing goal on a Monday morning and could forget about it for the rest of the week and get on with more pressing tasks.
So now I ask you, how could you uncomplicate your small business marketing?
2. Focus on one or two social media accounts
We all feel the pressure for our business to be on every social media platform around. Oh, and then a new one pops up (TikTok, we’re looking at you!) and we need to learn the intricacies of a whole new platform.
Well, stop the merry go round and choose one or two social media platforms that works well for your industry and produces results for your business.
Firstly, have a look at the results of your existing social media platforms – are they just extracting time and money, with no reward. Be honest, have a look at your analytics and see if there is value.
Aspects to look at include - volume of website traffic coming from each of your social media accounts. How many are clicking buy now from your social media platform? How many followers, likes and engagement does your business get with each platform - are they positive and adding value to your products and services? Is your social media engagement turning into sales or is it just from ‘tyre-kickers’?
Do you know the return on investment on your social media marketing?
Also, add up the cost and time it takes to maintain each of the platforms. Now put it all together, are you getting the results and value add with your marketing from your social media platforms? Can you cull a platform and put more time aside for the platform that is performing well and bringing in some results for your business?
Now that you know which social media platform to invest your time in, delve into the results further. Put some plans into place about how often to post, and the kind of content that works well and receives the kind of response that brings in business.
3. Find the small business marketing that works and ditch what isn’t working
You may have a number of marketing campaigns on the go, but some just aren’t bringing in the returns you need.
You may have been sending out newsletters for years to your loyal base of customers but are they really working for you? For the time you spend collating the database, creating the content and sending to your list, are they getting the response you need? Are they in line with industry norms?
Most of your marketing campaign software comes with its own analytics. Have a look behind the scenes and see where the results lead. Hopefully, they lead to profitable and favourable results.
If not, how can you improve these results or should you stop these campaigns as the return on investment is not worth it?
4. Automate your small business marketing
Where possible investigate if there is an app or automation software that can make some of the more tedious marketing activities automated.
For example, another client of mine, Cherie, was receiving the incorrect type of website leads. Instead of turning away these leads, and ultimately the website traffic, we set up an automated email which provided further qualification of the leads. The automated email put the onus back on the enquirer to answer a few questions in a follow up email. These questions qualified them further and reduced the volume of leads to then be followed up by the sales team.
Cherie could still see each of the leads in her system as they came in, so if she felt like they were a good lead she could forward it on to the appropriate salesperson, without going through the second qualifying email.
Some examples of marketing automation systems and apps include –
Social media automation – plan, create and post content ahead of time and use automation software to say when to post on your social media. These apps can manage all your social media accounts in one place - Hootsuite, Buffer, or Loomly.
Marketing automation - Use a marketing CRM like Hubspot to help you organise and track customers. The platform automatically tracks interactions and compiles the data about sales in one dashboard so the entire sales journey is visible. Its marketing arm includes blogging, landing pages, email newsletters, lead management, analytics, web, social media, SEO, and Google Ads.
Email marketing automation – Autopilot is a simple and visual marketing platform for teams to automate their sequence of marketing emails. It great for teams when they are starting out, as it is easy to learn, and engaging.
Autopilot works on the basis of sparking new relationships and rekindling old ones. Businesses that maintain regular contact generate twice as many leads. It monitors your customers journey and delivers insights into how messages are converting so you can adjust accordingly.
This software gets you thinking about your user journeys and how your customers should be getting information through your funnel.
Rethink what you are doing with your small business marketing.
5. Set a small business marketing schedule
Similar to how you set schedules for your day/week, your meetings and your family life, setting a marketing schedule is a great way to simplify it and keep you on track with all your marketing activities.
It can be as simple as – write one blog per month, send out a quarterly newsletter with three blogs, or one post on social media every Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon.
You don’t have to go to the extreme of one of my clients, that does not allow himself to leave the office on a Friday afternoon until he has written his weekly blog!
Setting a schedule can work for you if you set achievable goals.
For example, this easy and simple Instagram social media schedule I created for an architect client -
Tuesday – post about an international architect/popular architecture
Wednesday – post from one of our in-house projects in progress
Thursday – post of one of our in-house interior design project Friday – supplier or building material you love or an image of architecture in local area
Find the marketing that works for your business and off you go. If your marketing is still too hard, outsource it! There are all sorts of businesses and freelancers offering everything to do with marketing to help you.
Small business marketing is important, give it the attention it deserves, and you will reap the benefits ten-fold. Need some help to find more time for digital marketing? Get in contact with me here.