Does Marketing Make You Mental? The Top 5 Reasons That Might Be the Case.
Let’s face it, small business owners sometimes don’t even have time to go to the bathroom, let alone market their company, service or product. How do we know? We’re small business owners ourselves and sometimes we literally realize that its 5:00 and we’ve yet to go to the ladies’ room once! Can’t be good for the kidneys, but seriously is there ever enough time to do all that you want to do to grow your business?
So when it comes to your communications efforts, we’re willing to bet that a lot of you are marketing without a plan, using a combination of random one-off tactics, which are essentially like throwing money to the wind. While working with small businesses, we’ve noticed this pattern quite often. You’re putting a lot of moola out, but these one-offs ain’t bringin’ much back in. We call these people YMYNers. “You’re Marketing! You’re Not!” Here are the top five mistakes of YMYNers. The list may sound familiar to you:
1. Collateral Confidence
You depend on your business cards, letterhead, tri-fold brochure and basic
website to do the marketing for you.
2. Money Misappropriation
Someone offers you a great deal on an ad in your industry rag or to design a direct mail piece. Can’t pass up deals like that, right? Bye-bye money.
3. Consistent Inconsistency
In said ads and direct mail, you try different headlines, offers and designs to capture different peoples’ attention. You have so many great ideas to get people to use your company, here’s the opportunity to try ‘em all out!
4. Diarrhea of the Details
You have a really great company, product or service and feel compelled to share every single benefit, detail, story, color, blah, blah, blah, blah.
OR, our favorite, the completely opposite side of the coin:
5. Skeptical Avoidance
So why do small business owners do this? See above references to lack of time, and add to it a perceived lack of financial resources, the mistaken belief that marketing has to be expensive, and of course the feat that you can’t even measure if marketing is working.
Every small business should have these concerns, but it doesn’t mean you should throw the baby out with the bathwater because of them. It’s all about being thoughtful from the beginning and having some kind of guide to follow. You started your company with a business plan…why not have a marketing plan as well?
In these weekly posts we’ll be talking about creating a cohesive, consistent plan using some marketing strategies that might be just what your doctor ordered. So what’s the first step? We advise every business to start by defining their marketing objectives. Do you know what yours are? For instance, you know pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the thing to do these days, but what are you hoping to achieve by using it?
You see why it’s important to have your marketing objectives mapped out. Give it some thought. For us at Sweet Talk, all our marketing strategies are focused on this sole objective:
To increase revenue by reaching more potential customers with less effort.
As bettin’ gals, we’re willing to bet that might be one of your objectives too. So, stay tuned next week to same Bat Channel to get the next steps in making your marketing dreams come true!
About Danielle Walsmith/Lauren Tarne:
Lauren Tarne and Danielle Walsmith believe that behind every great plan lies great planners. With backgrounds in media arts and strategic public relations, Lauren and Danielle have developed and implemented communications strategy plans for individuals, nonprofit organizations, startups, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. They are currently managing partners of Sweet Talk PR, where they focus on providing clients with the right marketing, public relations and event planning strategies.
They are members of the International Association of Business Communicators, the Public Relations Society of America, the American Marketing Association, and contribute almost daily, to their business blog, "Adventures in Candyland". They are not sisters, but they might as well be.