Has Small Business Marketing Changed?

What do you think? Has marketing for your small business changed, compared to how you’ve promoted your business in the past? You might be thinking of course it has. We don’t advertise in the same places that we used to because they don’t work any more.

In reality, this is only your perception. You see, advertising is made up of three parts.

1. Message
2. Medium
3. Market

If you’ve stopped advertising in the newspaper, the newspaper is only a medium for delivering your marketing message. What if, the medium was not the problem? You likely chose that medium because you had reason to believe that your message would reach potential customers.  So the way to know if a medium is effective is through testing and tracking.

Here’s the problem with thinking in a linear fashion like, “if you don’t get results, then it must be the fault of the medium”.

In order to have any success with your advertising, you need to do three things.

1. You need to have the right offer.
2. You need to put that offer in front of the right people
3. You need to approach those people at the right time

You need to do all three things at the same time. The right offer to the right people at the wrong time will get you nothing. The right offer, at the right time in a medium that is not seen by the right people will get you zero results. I’ll say it again, you need to have all three components at the same time for your advertising to pay off for you.

Many small business owners have bought into the idea of using advertising as a way to get “exposure” for their business.  They have been told by those selling this “exposure” that they need to be out there when people are looking and use multiple exposures to stay “Top of Mind”.  Maybe you’ve heard that phrase before?

Most small business owners, however, use advertising in an ineffective way. They use it to make an announcement, but fail to include an offer or a call to action in their message. Do you know why this is important?

Measuring The Effectiveness Of Your Advertising

Announcements are static.  There is no reason to respond or even acknowledge them.  When you have an offer or a specific call to action in your promotions, this gives you a way to track the responses and thus the effectiveness of your ad and the medium you placed it in.

Without tracking, you will have only your feelings to go by or worse, just guess if it is working or not. You can’t assume that if the phone is ringing or if people are coming in to your business, that your ads working for you.

Think about how you feel when you go into a business to find a solution to your problem, and they are more concerned with finding out how you found them, than they are with finding out how they can help you.

How to make your ads more effective

The best way to make you ads more effective is to have a call to action that you can track.  You’ve seen these before in the form of coupons, department codes, tracking phone numbers and instructions to ask for a certain person. Now there are even more ways to track your offers.

Online promotions can help

When you are promoting your products and services online, people are finding your website or your offer when they are searching for what you offer. That means, you’ve already got your message in front of the right people, and at the right time. By testing and tracking two offers simultaneously, you can determine which one is the more compelling offer. Over time you may even come up with an irresistible offer! Your goal is to give your prospective buyers a compelling reason to take action now.

Online shoppers are typically impatient. These potential buyers want to know if you have what they want. And, they want to know why they should get it from you. Are you quickly answering these questions for potential customers, when they find your offer online?

Promoting Your Business Online

Promoting your business online today is much more involved than just putting up a website.  The more competition you have, the more creative you need to be in order to capture the attention and interest of your potential buyers.

People can choose to do business with you for many reasons, not just because you might have the best price. In fact, the lowest price is probably the worst reason to buy from someone. Have you ever bought something cheap, and then shortly thereafter, had to replace it with something of higher quality?

Online promotions have to tasks; be found by the right people and then compel them to take action now.  You simply need to determine what you want your ad, your website or your webpage to get accomplished.  Are you selling a product, or trying to compel your readers to do something else?

When you promote your business online, you can even ask people who do not take your desired action, to tell how you can do better. Much like you can when you meet someone in person.

Read that statement again. This could be a “light bulb” moment for you. Are you are thinking that if you can find out why someone is not responding to your offer, even when they are not in front of you, that would be some really powerful information? Information that you can use to improve your marketing efforts?

What do you think is the biggest mistake small business owners make in promoting their business online? Leave me your comment below or in the contact form to the right.