If you own and manage a small business, chances are, marketing and advertising your business has crossed your mind at least once. In fact, I hope you've thought of it more than once - because the right marketing can dramatically grow your business, and not thinking about it can be the reason your phones aren't ringing.
This Branding 101 series is designed to give you the basics of branding in a few steps. The reality is, you can market your business very effectively in many low-cost or free ways that don't involve you buying anything. Branding 101 involves establishing your brand name in your market, while spending very little money. This is most effective for new businesses and businesses without large advertising budgets.
The First Step - Define Your Business Goals
You may read that and think, "My goal is to have more business," - well, let's break that down for a minute. Do you need new customers? Do you need your current customers to buy more from you? Do you need your customers to buy from you more often? The answer may depend on what kind of business you run and supply and demand.
For example, a mechanic/auto shop has regular customers that come in for maintenance on a regular schedule, and customers who come in when there's a problem with their vehicle. If you analyze your business, you may see that one-time customers spend more money than maintenance customers, but they're only in once, so you're not converting these one-time customers into maintenance customers. Perhaps your marketing goal would be two-fold: to get more people to come to you when you have a problem, and then, convert those one-time customers into lifetime customers.
Your business goals may change over time, or may remain your focus for many years. However, the best marketers will review their progress toward their goal, review what marketing they've done, and then make adjustments or changes in order to meet or exceed their goals, or revise their goals as necessary.
Defining Your Strategy
The next step is to define exactly how you want your marketing to help you meet your business goals.
Let's use our Auto Shop as an example again. Of all the people that visit the Auto Shop when they have a car problem, do you know how they found you? Did they do a web search? Do they live in the neighborhood? Did a friend recommend them? These are all important because it should impact where you place your advertising.
You can take two approaches - the "let's keep what's already working" approach, or the "let's diversify and do the opposite and grow our customer base" approach. Again, it depends on what your business goals are, and what activities will get you closer to achieving those goals.
If most of your clients are coming from a personal recommendation, and you want to generate more loyal customers, maybe a rewards program would work well. Or, if most of your customers live in the neighborhood and see the Auto Shop every day, to keep those customers coming in, perhaps you should do a radius mailing with a coupon to people within a 2-mile radius. If you've already got the local crowd, consider starting a referral business to increase your referrals instead. Or, if they found you via a web search, some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to keep you ranked at the top of a Google search listing may be in order to keep those leads coming, or, try some of the other methods to diversify your customer-base.
Which is better? Which is right? There is no real right or wrong answer, but it does depend on what your business goals are. You should always track the results of any marketing campaign you run. If you decide, as the Auto Shop owner, that your goal is to get more locals into your shop in the first place, and that you will do a mailing to potential customers within a 2-mile radius, you could track how well it worked by counting how many coupons were redeemed, and then you can calculate your Return on Investment (or ROI). How much money did these customers spend? How much did the mailing cost? This will help you determine if your efforts were worth the expense.
This Branding 101 series is designed to give you the basics of branding in a few steps. The reality is, you can market your business very effectively in many low-cost or free ways that don't involve you buying anything. Branding 101 involves establishing your brand name in your market, while spending very little money. This is most effective for new businesses and businesses without large advertising budgets.
The First Step - Define Your Business Goals
You may read that and think, "My goal is to have more business," - well, let's break that down for a minute. Do you need new customers? Do you need your current customers to buy more from you? Do you need your customers to buy from you more often? The answer may depend on what kind of business you run and supply and demand.
For example, a mechanic/auto shop has regular customers that come in for maintenance on a regular schedule, and customers who come in when there's a problem with their vehicle. If you analyze your business, you may see that one-time customers spend more money than maintenance customers, but they're only in once, so you're not converting these one-time customers into maintenance customers. Perhaps your marketing goal would be two-fold: to get more people to come to you when you have a problem, and then, convert those one-time customers into lifetime customers.
Your business goals may change over time, or may remain your focus for many years. However, the best marketers will review their progress toward their goal, review what marketing they've done, and then make adjustments or changes in order to meet or exceed their goals, or revise their goals as necessary.
Defining Your Strategy
The next step is to define exactly how you want your marketing to help you meet your business goals.
Let's use our Auto Shop as an example again. Of all the people that visit the Auto Shop when they have a car problem, do you know how they found you? Did they do a web search? Do they live in the neighborhood? Did a friend recommend them? These are all important because it should impact where you place your advertising.
You can take two approaches - the "let's keep what's already working" approach, or the "let's diversify and do the opposite and grow our customer base" approach. Again, it depends on what your business goals are, and what activities will get you closer to achieving those goals.
If most of your clients are coming from a personal recommendation, and you want to generate more loyal customers, maybe a rewards program would work well. Or, if most of your customers live in the neighborhood and see the Auto Shop every day, to keep those customers coming in, perhaps you should do a radius mailing with a coupon to people within a 2-mile radius. If you've already got the local crowd, consider starting a referral business to increase your referrals instead. Or, if they found you via a web search, some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to keep you ranked at the top of a Google search listing may be in order to keep those leads coming, or, try some of the other methods to diversify your customer-base.
Which is better? Which is right? There is no real right or wrong answer, but it does depend on what your business goals are. You should always track the results of any marketing campaign you run. If you decide, as the Auto Shop owner, that your goal is to get more locals into your shop in the first place, and that you will do a mailing to potential customers within a 2-mile radius, you could track how well it worked by counting how many coupons were redeemed, and then you can calculate your Return on Investment (or ROI). How much money did these customers spend? How much did the mailing cost? This will help you determine if your efforts were worth the expense.