The task of marketing your small business may seem daunting, but it is easy to let the world know that you are there.
It doesn’t cost a fortune to run a successful publicity program, and I include a few helpful ideas in this chapter.
Successful marketing can include a variety of tactics, and it is important that you use more than one in your efforts to communicate with your potential customers.
Your customers may become resistant to a single approach, and its effectiveness may wane in time.
You need to consider a number of different ways to contact customers, for example, letters, classified advertising, social media, leafleting, etc. Spend a lot of time making your website the best, which may involve utilizing the services of professional website designers.
Your website is your virtual shop window and your chance to promote your services and products to generate online sales.
Concentrate on making your website customer focused and simple to navigate, so that their time on the site is minimized. All you need from them is
1.A sale.
2.The customer to click onto a link which generates income for the business.
3.Their details for future marketing purposes.
4.Their details to sell on to another for marketing purposes.
A website is a 24/7 sales tool and is key to a business’s success. The following areas should be focused on to maximize the website’s value:
■ The website should be easy to use and informative so that a customer can easily discover details of your product or service and buy without a problem.
■ The web designer should think like your customer and gear the website experience to the customer’s needs. Both the website designer and yourself need to research the target audience and their needs first.
■ The goal of the website needs to be set first. Is it to be used for e-commerce (i.e., will it be a direct sales portal) or is its purpose to inform new customers or to provide a service to existing customers?
■ Keep it simple and easy for all browsers to load.
■ Make a note of bad websites you come across, what’s bad and what shouldn’t you do?
■ Be open to feedback from your customers regarding their experience on the website.
■ Be unique and use humor to get your message across.
■ Remember that the latest is not necessarily the best; use tried and tested methods if they do the job.
■ Reviewing your new or existing website and improving it to match your target customer will prove a smart investment for your business.
■ Continually review your website and sales statistics to assess its effectiveness, and update if necessary.
Expenditure on a website is an investment in the business, and this seems as good a time as any to explore the concept of ‘return on investment’.
The return on investment is a method of measuring how much a business can benefit from its expenditure on a project.
For example, if a business is considering purchasing its own van to reduce its mailing costs of £5,000 a year, it needs to consider whether the costs of doing so would produce a saving.
The van, driver, fuel and other costs are estimated to be, initially £10,000 and £2,000 a year thereafter. The return on investment can be calculated as follows:
The business is forecast to make a saving of £4,000 over a 4-year period, and £3,000 a year thereafter. This is the return on investment.
In the foregoing example, it is fairly easy to calculate the return on investment, but it is not quite so clear when the expenditure is on something like a website, as the additional income it will generate is hard to identify.
In order to quantify the benefit of a project, such as the expense of a website, it is necessary to identify the goals that the project is going to achieve. In the case of a website, it will be
1.An increase in the targeted traffic to the site.
2.An increase in the sales and/or leads.
3.An increase in the positive feedback from visitors to the site.
4.An increase in the website traffic converting to an increase in sales.
5.An increase in the checkout rate (are people completing the sale or abandoning the shopping cart?).
In order to do this, a process to monitor the targets needs to be created, so that the return on the expenditure can be assessed.
Numerous apps are available that monitor traffic to a website and the behavior of those browsing. I recommend that you invest in this technology.
Produce a professional-looking flyer or brochure and enclose it with all the outgoing mail, to reduce the mailing costs of a separate mailing.
Although these items are often discarded by their recipients, those who don’t will have something tangible that they can refer back to should they consider they need your services in the future.
Produce a newsletter to send to existing customers, business referrers and potential customers. This can either be mailed or e-mailed, and should be used to encourage brand support.
Encourage visitors to your website to subscribe to your e-mail newsletters.
It is cheaper to send a large number of e-mails as part of a marketing plan, than it is to actually mail the recipients. But, is it an effective way of contacting your customers?
According to a survey by Campaign Monitor in 2015, for every $1 invested, e-mail marketing generates an average return of $38.
Detailed analysis can be provided of the results of an e-mail campaign, which show the number of e-mails that were opened, how many were then clicked through to the website and how many resulted in the intended sale.
Therefore, we are likely to see e-mail marketing used more by businesses in the future.
With all the advances in marketing technology, it is still surprising to see businesses that have failed to modernize and waste money on ineffectual marketing campaigns.
If, after reading this, you still think that an advert in the newsagent’s window will be enough, you’ve missed the point, as it is easier than ever to attract customers to your business. Unfortunately, it is also easy for your competitors to do the same!
Make the most of social media using social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn (e.g., create a Facebook page offering interesting content, discounts and offers).
Encourage existing customers and new ones to like your page, and use your page to show a gallery of past work. Regularly update the page and let everyone know.
Nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media now. This is a near tenfold increase within the last decade.
Each of the social media platforms is unique in its own right and requires unique ways of engagement. Try to identify which one fits with your customer profile.
Regular blogs are a good low-cost way of keeping the business’s presence in the public eye. You should try to create articles such as tip collections, industry best practice and top 10 lists.
If you can’t create these yourself, this is an area where any expenditure will pay dividends, so a subcontractor who specializes in such things should be sought.
Make the most of your local or specialist press by sending regular releases to the relevant editor (you may need to research who this is). The releases could include details of the creation of extra jobs, a new business launch or a seminar you are organizing.
All these make for interesting news stories that the press are often desperate for.
This is a valuable exercise as it targets potential customers and it is free.
Advertising needs to be focused not only in its message, but also on the audience receiving it. Web-hosting services allow businesses to do this with accuracy. Online advertising is paid on a ‘per-click’ basis, with the advertiser charged a fee (Facebook charges 80 cents) every time the advertisement is clicked on.
General advertisement is more for business awareness rather than selling specific products, and humor is becoming more important in this approach. The humor needs to be tailored to suit different markets.
Conventional advertisement mediums, such as TV, radio and newspaper advertisements, are very expensive and their effectiveness is difficult to monitor.
Online advertising can be cheaper, and can be made more targeted, such as Google Pay per Click.
Utilize websites such as Gumtree and Vivastreet where you can post advertisements for free.
You may accept that you are good at what you do, but have you got the imagination and flair to lift your content above that of your competitors?
There are many ways to share information – blogging, creating videos, hosting podcasts, designing infographics or producing authoritative articles.
You need to accept that you don’t have the skills to create these things yourself and consider subcontracting to firms (like Upwork) that specialize in producing this work.
If the work you do is of a high enough standard, you may be considered an expert and included on others’ websites.
If you have not got the resources to subcontract the work, you can reuse your own old content and update it.
Sponsorship and Publicity Stunts
Any story in the press regarding your business is free marketing, so any expense incurred to publicize the business is money well spent. Ways to do this can be as varied as
1.Creating a publicity stunt, for example the JT’s Restaurant example in Chapter 3 could invite a celebrity to its opening night.
2.Do something for the community, for example, JT’s again could host a charity lunch for the local Stroke Association.
3.Sponsor an event by providing services as a giveaway, for example, JT’s again could offer a free meal for two as a prize.
4.Nominate the business for an award (if need be, even create the award – you won’t be the first to do this!).
It is important if this approach is taken that the press is alerted in advance in order that they can be on hand to photograph the event for their publication.
The business can also seek opportunities to be interviewed as an industry expert on relevant matters, for example, JT’s could provide a chef to comment on the latest diet fads.
Organize Contests or Free Gifts
The business should take advantage of the fact that everyone loves a free gift, by giving away items to build up brand awareness; for example, JT’s could provide a free online recipe book to anyone who clicks onto their website.
Or they could give small gifts when presenting the bill at the end of the meal or offer a prize to anyone who completes a review of their experience.
Use Facebook groups to market test your product or services at a discount, offer free gifts and prizes (including the business logo) to encourage take-up.
Come up with a zany idea for a viral marketing campaign along the lines of the ice bucket challenge.
Consider working with other businesses in your location or industry on a joint marketing program. For example, JT’s could team up with a local taxi business and each could benefit from the other’s customer base.
The benefit of this approach is that the costs of any mailings etc. are shared.
Each could agree to distribute the other’s business cards and flyers.
This first suggestion is something that irritates me, so be careful not to upset your customers by overusing this tactic. You could devise a telephone message that plays your promotions while customers are waiting to be connected to the correct advisor.
Mislead, but do not lie, in your marketing material, there is a fine art to this. It is very easy to get a different message across by omitting information, rather than including false information. This tactic should only be used on rare occasions, such as responding to an aggressive marketing campaign by one of your competitors.
You can exchange or buy customer lists and offer to pay the other business a commission for every sale you make. Just make sure that you have requested permission from your customers to share their details! You may receive commission from the other company’s sales.
Use every opportunity to get your branding known, whether this is decals on office or retail windows, or the inclusion of the branding on the business’s fleet of vehicles.
Details of any current sales promotions should be included on the letterheads of all letters and e-mails.
Your data capture system should include the facility to record customers’ birth dates, and birthday coupons and surprise rewards could be sent to them as appropriate.
A key member of staff should be available and offer to speak at events, for example the chef at JT’s could offer to speak at Women’s Institute meetings, with the goal that the members may consider visiting the restaurant.
You could consider hosting a forum or website to provide assistance to potential customers.
Successful marketing is not only what brings the customers to your door, but it is also about influencing what they buy when they get there. A business’s ability in this area can be key to its success.
Key to good marketing is not just to sell the product, but to sell the lifestyle it will bring. Motor manufacturers’ advertising is often based on this model.
Marketing is all about influencing the buyers’ behavior, and the use of new methods (called geo-target-marketing) can have a major impact on that buying behavior.
Geo-marketing is the targeting of customers through the use of data collection and consumer profiling, so that a business can ensure that its products are on sale in the correct locations. One such example of this is impulse buying, either online or in actual locations.
Personalized pricing offers and tailored offers are possible through the collection of personal details, which is becoming increasingly popular. Some marketing strategies can involve the use of global positioning system (GPS) tracking.
Geo-marketing collects data of customers as they enquire and buy (mostly online, but occasionally by the customer completing in-store documentation).
To be successful, marketeers need to understand their customers’ behavior, including what, why, where and how they buy.
Unknown to the customer, they go through a process before they purchase anything. This process is as follows:
1.Awareness of a need (often generated by advertising).
2.Research of the market to identify the products.
3.Evaluating alternatives available.
4.Purchase of the product and possibly an impulse buy.
5.Post-purchase evaluation/notification to contacts.
It is the marketeer’s job to influence the customer’s behavior during this process, and this can be done using numerous techniques. The process can vary from customer to customer, and may even vary for the same product if conditions change. With the use of data obtained through geo-marketing, it is easier to influence the customer’s behavior.
Impulse buying is big business, and resources need to be applied to this area of a business’s sales. Impulse buying is seen from the customer’s perspective as an unplanned behavior. The marketeers know that this spontaneous, immediate and emotionally driven behavior can be easily influenced.
It has been estimated that up to 40% of all purchases are impulse purchases, and that figure is increasing as Internet providers are getting better at placing personalized advertising on web pages.
Estimates of impulse buys in supermarkets are as high as 60% of all purchases, and they are not just restricted to the chewing gum by the checkout. I have actually bought a car as an impulse buy.
Supermarkets are getting more sophisticated in using both in-store and promotional strategies to maximize impulse purchases, which are affected by a large number of things, including social and cultural influences, promotional activities and the environment of the store (or the user experience of the website).
There is one factor that stands above all others though: the perception of lower pricing. This is often enhanced by the vendor purporting to offer the product at a discount to its previous price, which has often proved not to be the case.
The message in the advertising can be broken down further, and distinguished as to whether it forms part of a push and pull marketing strategy.
Push marketing is a form of advertising that sends a message to the customer. It can also be known as direct response marketing, and it targets a specific sector (such as baby-boomers) with messages and offers tailored to them. This is usually done by e-mail mail-shots or advertisements in periodicals.
Pull marketing is the opposite of push marketing, in that it pulls prospective customers to the business’s website.
The age of the Internet has allowed customers access to a greater amount of information, and most undertake a significant amount of research before they decide upon a purchase (especially of expensive items). They read reviews, conduct keyword searches and ask online friends for suggestions.
Pull marketing can be used to provide those customers with answers to their questions, by providing details for them to discover and links to the business website. Businesses can do this by publishing their own blogs and reviews of their products.
Some businesses are less than honest in this process by providing their own fabricated customer reviews.
In terms of strategy, push marketing is about devising ways to display a product to your customers, usually by way of advertising that specific product. Direct mail-shots are often used to generate an interest in a specific product.
Pull marketing is more about creating customer awareness of your brand and services. Pull marketing is the process of making it easier for your customers to find you, both virtually and online. Pull marketing is more of an online method, used to ensure that customers are directed to a specific web page.
Consumers are always responsive to bargains, and a discount offer to your customers immediately after their purchase can prove beneficial.
This offer can also be framed as a thank-you for the business, with a time-dependent special discount being offered for a further sale.
Always ask your customers how they found you, and why they have decided to use your services, so that you can monitor the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
It is very important that a business lets the world know of its existence. A popular way of doing this is to network with other business owners and professional advisors. It is usual to join organizations such as
1.The local chamber of trade.
2.The Round Table.
3.A trade association; if there isn’t one then start one up, you’re sure to get an impressive job title as chairman or founder, which can be used to impress your customers.
Take up golf. A lot of business deals take place on a round of golf. You will gain 3 to 4 hours of uninterrupted access to your business target or business referrer.
You don’t have to be particularly good at it, as people will enjoy beating you. You just need to be proficient enough to get around a golf course without holding up the groups playing behind you.
You can get away with hitting the occasional car in the car park. I can personally vouch for that.