Why Should Your Small Business Care About Marketing?
How do you go from being an unknown, struggling brand to a well-known and wildly successful one? Marketing!
Unless your business is thriving, sustainable, and profitable by word-of-mouth alone and you have no desire to grow, most businesses need marketing.
The trouble is, many newbie small business owners aren’t entirely sure what exactly marketing is. All they know is that thinking about it stresses them out.
If that’s you, read on. We’ll give you a digestible definition, and let you know exactly what to do to get started.
WTF Is Marketing?
Many people’s understanding of marketing goes something like this: marketing is how you get people to know about the thing, want the thing, and buy the thing.
And… they’re right! But that’s not the whole picture.
Getting To the Sale
Going right for “buy the thing!” is kind of like asking someone to marry you the first time you message them on Bumble. It’s probably not going to happen, and it’s likely to creep them out.
Just like you’d normally date for a while before you wed, marketing needs to help your customers get to know and love your brand before you expect them to make a significant investment in you.
Though it varies depending on the context of the purchase, marketing lore has a Rule of 7 that posits that people typically need to encounter your brand 7 times before they feel familiar enough with your business to trust you enough to buy from you.
So, before they’re willing to buy, they have to see or hear from your brand 7 times and like what they see or hear from you. Each encounter needs to build positive associations, trust, and recognition.
(This may not apply to your situation if you’re selling something super inexpensive and there isn’t much riding on the decision to purchase or not or if a business that already has dedicated customers and fans is selling items for you.)
Marketing’s first job is to build positive awareness of your brand. It’s next job is to build positive awareness of your offers, and to provide enough helpful information and incentives for customers to decide to buy.
But! It doesn’t stop there. Marketing has more work to do after the sale.
Happy Customers = More Happy Customers
There are a lot of good reasons for keeping the customers you have happy.
First and foremost, people will always trust a recommendation from someone they like who doesn’t stand to profit from it over one from someone who does.
In other words, they’re going to be more persuaded by reviews, testimonials, ratings, case studies, and recommendations from people they like and admire than anything you say on your website, social media, or videos.
Also, it’s generally less expensive to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one.
So, once the customer has purchased your product or service, marketing can help to encourage them to use what they bought, reach out for support if they run into any trouble, and remind them to sing your praises online and in-person to their friends, family and colleagues. Of course, marketing can also encourage them to become repeat customers at greater levels of investment.
When working properly, marketing ushers people who have never heard of you into becoming followers, customers, fans, and advocates.
Getting The Perfect Customer
But not just *anyone*. Marketing is most effective when you’ve narrowed it down to exactly who you want to serve.
This is hard for most budding entrepreneurs. They want to cast a wide net and see where the money comes in.
But, you can’t message effectively when you’re trying to appeal to everyone. It just gets too bland and non-specific. No one realizes you’re talking to them.
Getting specific on who you’re talking to, who is going to be most happy with and most helped by your offer is essential for good marketing.
Why Does Your Small Business Need Marketing?
If that sounds like a lot of work and an ongoing time and/or money investment, it is.
So, why bother with marketing again? Well…
You want more customers.
You want to make more money.
You want to grow.
These are all nearly universal business goals. If this is what you want, you’re going to need to sort out how to continually reach more people and convince them to buy. If your personal network can’t sustain that, you need to figure out marketing.
Can a Small Team With a Limited Budget Do Marketing?
Yep! But not everywhere at once.
One of the biggest mistakes we see small businesses make is trying to take on too many marketing channels at once- and getting discouraged and giving up when their efforts don’t seem to pay off.
You’re going to have to make some deep cuts and get very narrow and specific on:
Who you want for customers.
What your offers are.
How you’ll get never-heard-of-yous to become customers.
How you’ll get customers to become repeat customers, at bigger levels of investment.
What kind of content you can commit to producing each week.
Which channels you will show up on:
At recommended frequencies.
Following formatting best practices for the platform.
Constantly evaluating and adapting based on feedback.
What you’ll be promoting when.
How you’ll make the buying process smooth and easy.
In other words, the best thing you can do is get a solid marketing strategy that works for your business, budget, resources, and goals.
If you’re a small team, that may mean you can only effectively commit to a few channels- I’d recommend 2-3.
Producing enough content to build a following and stay relevant takes a lot of work. Formatting and releasing it properly for the platform takes ongoing research because most digital spaces are subject to rapid evolution- particularly social media.
No matter where you’re marketing, you, your team, or someone you outsource will need to devote significant time and effort to marketing in order to be effective.
How Long Does Marketing Take to Work?
I say significant time and effort because most forms of marketing take months of consistent quality content before you’re likely to see a return on investment.
According to marketing thought leaders, here is roughly how long it takes for some common types of marketing to work:
Content Marketing: 6-9 months
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 6-12 months
Google Ads: 6-12 months
Social Media Marketing: 6 months
Now we’re not just talking about posting once every other week and calling it good. Here’s how often marketing thought leaders say you should be posting:
Blogging: at least once a week if you’re a small blog trying to build awareness, 3-4x a week if you want organic blog traffic
Facebook: once or twice a day
Instagram: 14x a week if you have less than a thousand followers
LinkedIn: at least once a day
Youtube: daily
In all honesty, that is a f*&% ton of work. Even after you’ve honed your marketing strategy down so you’re just showing up frequently enough in a few places.
Now, I understand being worried about outsourcing costs. That’s why so many new business owners try to DIY their marketing or hire the cheapest copywriter or social media manager they can find… But, do understand this could significantly slow down the time it takes to get you the results you want. Cheaper isn’t necessarily cheaper in the long run.
If your budget is pretty limited, I highly recommend working with a good marketing consultant to help you figure out a marketing strategy that you have the capacity to successfully execute. It will save you a lot of heartache and disappointment. It will tell you what you need to do in order to be successful. It will prevent you from getting overwhelmed and giving up or discouraged because you didn’t understand how much content over how long was necessary for you to see significant advances.
Want some marketing strategy help? Get a Customized Marketing Plan tailored to *your* business here.
