You’ve started on a journey with your new/newish small business – congratulations! Your prospects are on their own customer journey, one with 7 steps:
Know, Like, Try, Trust, Buy (finally!), Repeat, Refer
They have to know you exist (grand opening, social posts, press, signage, e-mail blasts, targeted mail) before they can begin to like you (click, call, subscribe, follow your posts). They may make an initial trial purchase (try) before they trust you enough to make a significant purchase (buy).
Think that process only applies to major purchases? Imagine it’s 90 degrees outside and you’re on your way home from running errands when you see the neighbor kids have a lemonade stand. You know them and like them, you trust/hope they washed the pitcher, so you buy a glass or two. Would you have stopped at a stand in a different neighborhood? Not as readily. All customers go through some semblance of that journey.
And you have to move your prospects along those steps with precious little for a marketing budget. You may have budgeted 5% to 10% of first year’s revenue towards marketing, but that spending level will generally have to mellow out to 1% to 4% as the business matures. If you’ve forecasted $300K in sales, let’s say you have an initial marketing budget of $20,000. How will you best invest those funds?
Before you dive into website and social media development, a prudent first step is to develop some messaging and branding. Customers will have to know – quickly – why they should buy from you. There needs to be something unique about your business and a solution to your customers’ problems. These need to be conveyed by a clean logo (do a Google search for “business logo fails” to see some cautionary tales!), consistent messaging and even color choices. Don’t skimp on this step.
THEN you can work on developing your website (still relevant in this social media era) and social profiles on platforms that make sense for your brand. Those costs alone can range from $1K for your buddy’s kid to do it to $20K for a professional solution set. Having the right key words and phrases in the right places to match a searcher’s query is at the heart of Search Engine optimization (SEO), but your developer will have to think beyond this to Schema Markup (so snippets of your site will be displayed in search results) and to AIO or Artificial Intelligence Optimization. And remember, you have maybe $20K to begin with… You quickly see why small business owners have to be scrappy!
Oh, and far too many new business owners get sucked into contractual monthly fees for “web site management” – we’ve seen line items of $1,500 per month for that. Yes, ongoing editing and improvements come at a cost, but long-term fees should taper and your web developer should coach you on how to add content yourself. Outsized monthly fees are the web equivalent of dealer undercoating for your new car.
Everything up to now came with a price tag, so let’s talk about something that’s free yet powerful: create a Google Business Profile. Your business’ information can be displayed above the search results on some of the most valuable real estate on the web, shown above the organic search results. Your profile can contain your website, address or service area, products/services, hours and reviews, a key component of trust.
Many people think that social media is free, but that’s only partially true. Yes, you can have a free profile on most platforms, and they might share your posts with a few followers. However, to get your posts delivered to all of your followers or to use social media’s immense power to get in front of new, relevant, interested target customers, you’ll generally need to pay. These channels have been watching us for years – they know who a likely customer for you would be. But do please remember that we’re talking about social media. Your posts should be less like an ad and more like a helpful, friendly, knowledgeable neighbor. Engagement should be your goal, vital to be trusted and liked. Funny doesn’t hurt, either!
Content marketing is alive and well in the AI age (and good content stands out against AI slop). Answer a common question, pen an article, review a product – just like with social media, be helpful. Kraft Foods is betting big on content marketing; we’ve all eaten far too many boxes of their mac & cheese – advertising it won’t really move the needle much. But show a quick and easy one-pot recipe to busy customers and you’ve got something. So, Kraft is reportedly spending 2/3 of their budget on content, chiefly recipes. This content can be used in three great spots: on your website for SEO love from search engines, who reward original, relevant content with higher search rank; in your e-mail campaign (more below); and for social posts. On the website itself, content can be on a blog page, a FAQ list, an articles repository – anywhere, really. And if you’re thinking that no one will read your blog, that’s OK; the chief audience for a blog is search engines, and I promise you they WILL read it.
Once you have some customers, keep in touch with an e-mail campaign or CRM (customer relationship management). It’s significantly less expensive to retain or reactivate a current or past customer than to find a new one. However, marketing guru Jeffrey Gitomer reminds us of another benefit: keeping in touch with customers will find you new ones as they forward your content (refer). Professional e-mail platforms make your communications look great and provide a wealth of delivery and reporting tools. And spend some time on your subject line – you have about 60 characters to entice a recipient to open your e-mail.
Finally, any and all marketing should have a Call to Action (CTA), where you indicate what the customer should do next. If you watch the morning news in KC, you’ll often hear a siding company end each commercial with “click or call now.” That’s their call to action. It may sound silly, but if you don’t invite an action, you often won’t get one. We’d be remiss if we didn’t include a CTA here, so: visit our own website to become a client, if you haven’t already, and then work with your KSBDC advisor to craft a marketing plan that works for your business and your budget.
