You start your business and you are so excited. Finally, you get to take that thing you are passionate about and take control of your life. You know people will be knocking down the door to your business. Soon you realize that for people to be knocking down your door, they have to know you exist. You’re told that you have to market your business and find your “ideal customer.” You are supposed to know where they are hanging out so you can hang out there too. PLUS, you are supposed to know about their marital status, how many kids they have and how much money they make. You feel your heart start to beat faster and you are thinking, “Why does marketing have to be so hard?” All you wanted to do was open your business and make money.
Demystifying the whole marketing experience for your business
Because most of us started our business based on a passion or skill that we possessed, we did not start out even remotely understanding marketing. Up until a few years ago, it was only the “big boys” that used the term “marketing.” The average business knew about advertising, but even that was limited. You might have placed an ad in your local newspaper or did some radio advertising if you were holding a special event. More often than not, we would produce a flyer and out our business cards on the front counter and hope our best customers would spread the word.
Fast forward to today and most of those methods are completely ineffective. The digital world has created a society that is fragmented and segmented and disconnected. Who can name one way to reach the majority of your audience? Most of us would be hard pressed to come up with an answer to that question.
So, to “demystify” what marketing is, let’s take it down to it’s most common denominator. There are a million definitions and explanations but to put it simply, marketing is the culmination of all the steps to get your product or service known to your customers that results in a purchase. Not only should it result in a purchase, but it should create and nurture a relationship with them that will bring them back again and again. Yes, it involves research and testing but your main goal is to make a sale.
Breaking it Down
So, we know WHAT marketing is and WHY we need to market our business, let’s break it down and find some easy and doable ways to market. For most readers here, you are a small business. You are probably understaffed- maybe no staff at all besides yourself. Maybe you are just starting out and feeling the burn of trying to get everything done in any given day. The last thing you want or need is to have one more thing added to your list of things to do. Since you know that marketing is the way to get customers, you know that you will need to find a way to make that happen along with everything else you need to do. Try these simple steps to get you started.
- Do not try to be on every social media platform there is, or every “anything else” for that matter. Social media is trendy and it’s affordable and it is a great way to reach a lot of people- that’s a given. There is not enough time in the day to have a presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, You Tube and whatever else is coming down the pipe. Besides that, your customers are probably not on all of those platforms so you would be wasting your time. This takes us back to the part about knowing our ideal customer. When you know who they are and where they hang out the most, that is exactly where you should be hanging out too. If your ideal customer is a baby boomer, they are probably not hanging out on SnapChat, Twitter or TikTok to the same degree that they might be on Facebook or Instagram. If that ideal customer is a DIY’er you are probably going to find them first on Pinterest. Many of us are on more than one social media platform but most of us have one or two that we are on the most, and so do your customers. Those are the ones that you should be on as well. If you are just starting out- PICK ONE. Get that dialed in and then add one more.
- We are being bombarded with messages every minute of every day. We are surrounded by the noise telling us what we should do and buy and where we should go. What are your competitors throwing out there right now? We often hear people saying they just want to unplug for the day. Some cannot even remember a time without social media and Google providing an endless array of information and stimulation. What that means for you is to make sure that your presence is providing value to your customer, so you move beyond the noise. That is the only job of your content and message that you put out there. It has to be interesting and valuable in order for your customer to engage.
- Whatever you do, BE CONSISTENT. Those mysterious, impossible to explain, algorithms are fueled by consistency and engagement. For most businesses, that means posting at least once a day, every day. That alone might be sending shivers up your spine but there are ways that you can accomplish this without falling into some deep dark pit. Will talk about that more.
So why does marketing have to be so hard? It doesn’t if you create a system that is easy to access and easy to re-purpose. We’ll be talking a lot more about that in future blogs but here are a few tips to get you started.
My favorite social media tips
- Pick 5 categories that you will create content in for your business. These should be categories that are easy enough to create content for and that will provide value to your readers. Here are some of the easiest that I have found.
- Behind the Scenes– Give the readers an inside look at what it takes to run a business like yours. If you a retailer it could be setting up merchandise displays or receiving a large shipment. If you are a service business, it could be what it takes to prepare to provide that service.
- Tip of the Day- What juicy tidbit could you give away that will help them solve a problem or meet a need? These should be short and sweet.
- Your Story- Stories are powerful. Telling a story about why you started your business can be compelling and help your reader get to know you better. We know people like to do business with those they know, like and trust.
- Engagement- Asking short questions that are designed to get the reader to respond in the comments is one way to do this. If you are an interior designer, you might show pictures of two different styles (think Farmhouse and Urban) and ask which one they like best.
- Promotional- We are in this to make money, right? So, planning posts that will promote your business is totally acceptable. The caveat is that your promotions should be no more than roughly 20% of your posts. Plan them out and make them count.
- FAQs- What are those questions people are always asking you? What are the questions you see people posting on other pages? Use those to create a series o FAQs where you give them the answer and show you are the expert. Again, these should be short and sweet.
These are just a few but check out our complete list on the Learning page on our website. https://rhondaloweconsulting.com/learning/
- Don’t try to sell people who don’t know you. Realize that social media is all about building relationships that will result in them becoming a customer. This takes patience. Be prepared to stay in it for the long haul.
- Think about how you can re-purpose the content you create. Can you break it down into bite size pieces for Facebook or Instagram Stories? Can you pull a simple comment or question out of a piece and expand on that? This will make content creation a lot easier.
- Learn how to use the analytics so you post on the days and times that our readers are there. You will get better results.
In the end marketing is a skill that you can continually be learning and improving. Is marketing hard? Not really. When you think of the power it has to grow your business you might just find yourself really enjoying it!