The Crucial Role of Marketing for Small Businesses

One of the most common mistakes made by small businesses is underestimating the power of effective marketing. In today’s competitive landscape, neglecting marketing can hinder growth and success. While hiring a dedicated marketing professional might seem costly for small businesses, there are more strategic ways to approach marketing that can yield remarkable results.

Rethinking Standard Small Business Marketing Strategies

Standard marketing practices for small businesses often involve ordering flyers or business cards and hiring individuals to distribute them. While these steps have their place, they often fail to set a business apart from its competitors. Merely having a presence through a basic website and a social media page isn’t enough to create a lasting impact. To truly stand out and leverage the potential of marketing, a different approach is needed.

1. Compelling Design Matters: Your marketing materials, such as flyers and business cards, should engage and compel potential customers to explore your services. Design plays a crucial role in capturing attention.
2. Engaging Distribution: Distributing materials isn’t just about quantity, but quality. Ensure that your distribution personnel engage with potential customers, sparking curiosity and interest.
3. Holistic Online Presence: A website is an excellent tool, but it’s essential to focus on SEO, ranking, and visibility to attract organic online traffic.
4. Expertise in Social Media: Entrusting your social media presence to someone knowledgeable about social media marketing and content creation can significantly impact your online engagement and reach.

Outsourcing: A Smart Move for Small Business Marketing

Considering the challenges and intricacies of effective marketing, outsourcing can be a game-changer for small businesses. Here are some compelling reasons why outsourcing your marketing efforts makes sense:

1. Cost-Effectiveness: Outsourcing is often more affordable than hiring a full-time marketing professional.
2. Design Expertise: Access to design professionals ensures your branding is visually appealing and consistent.
3. Online Visibility: Maintaining a strong online presence is vital; outsourcing ensures you stay relevant and easily discoverable.
4. Reputation Management: Outsourcing can help you manage your online reputation, addressing customer feedback promptly.
5. Innovative Ideas: Professional marketing teams can bring creative and innovative ideas to attract and retain customers.
6. Precise Targeting: Outsourced experts can help you define and target your ideal customer base accurately.

Real-Life Success Story: 20,000 Social Media Interactions in Just 7 Days

A compelling case study highlights the effectiveness of professional marketing. One of our clients, a struggling restaurant owner, approached us for assistance. Through careful analysis, we identified that the restaurant lacked appeal to both the younger generation and those seeking a more upscale experience.

Our approach involved:

1. Defining the Target Audience: Understanding the specific customer segments we aimed to attract.
2. Strategic Competition: Crafting and launching a targeted competition that garnered massive marketing efforts.
3. Powerful Marketing: Utilizing various marketing channels to create a buzz around the competition.

The result? Within just 7 days, the campaign generated an impressive 20,000 social media interactions. Not only did the event succeed, but we also devised a long-term plan to capitalize on this success. Today, the restaurant thrives, enjoying near-full occupancy throughout the week.

Take Away

Marketing isn’t an expense; it’s an investment in your small business’s growth and success. By embracing professional marketing strategies and considering outsourcing, you can unlock untapped potential and create a distinct identity in a competitive market.

Previous version of this article: 

The biggest mistake small businesses do is to completely ignore marketing!

For small businesses hiring a marketing professional to take care of marketing is a big cost, that’s why the standard marketing small businesses do looks a bit like this:

1. Order flyers or Business cards, and sometimes both.
2. Hire a kid to distribute flyers in mail boxes or in streets nearby.
3. Hire an advertising agency to build a site. Or even sometimes use free online sites.
4. Create a facebook page and ask an employee to take care of it, for a monthly bonus.

Even though all the above steps are important, none is differentiating the small business from all the others, thus you have the impression that marketing is useless … it is not, you are just doing it wrong !

Here’s why the 4 things above yield different results when done professionally:

1. Are the flyers or business card compelling your customers to check your service? Exactly! Design matters!
2. Is the kid distributing correctly, or is he/she just standing like a tree with a flyer in his/her hand? Is he engaging people?
3. A website is great. But what about SEO & ranking & visibility ?
4. What is your employee’s experience in social media marketing or content marketing? Yeah, that’s exactly what i thought!

Small Businesses Should Outsource Marketing

And here’s a list of why you should outsource marketing as a small business:

1. Much cheaper than hiring someone to take care of your marketing.
2. Because you will always need design pros to help you with a lot of the branding.
3. Because you need to be on top of results when customers look you up online.
4. Because you need to have a good reputation management.
5. Because you will need creative ideas to bring in customers.
6. Because you will need to target your customers precisely.

Case Study: 20 000 Social Media interaction in 7 days

One of our clients, a restaurant owner was on the verge of bankruptcy, we were referred to him by another client, so he decided to give us a try … We identified the problem, which was basically that his restaurant was no longer “cool” enough for the younger generation, and not classy enough for the other purposes meetings…
We solved this by first identifying the target clients, then preparing and finally launching a specific competition, all while putting maximum marketing power around this competition, within 7 days the campaign registered 20 000 social media interaction, and the event was a huge success, but more importantly we devised a plan to bank on this event … 6 months later, the restaurant is full almost 7 days a week!