In the absence of solid marketing, even the most ambitious small business is liable to have trouble attracting new customers. After all, if no one is aware your business exists, a lack of foot traffic should hardly prove surprising. So, if your current marketing efforts are failing to produce the desired results, there’s no time like the present to start considering reasons as to why. Small business owners looking to refine their approach to marketing should be mindful of the following missteps.
You’re Not Working with a Dedicated Marketing Agency
As many fledgling entrepreneurs come to discover, being able to manage a business doesn’t necessarily equate to being able to market that business. So, if you have very little idea of what you’re doing on the marketing front, you’d be wise to get in touch with a dedicated marketing agency. Experienced professionals will be able to identify any flaws in your current promotional efforts and assist you in crafting and implementing a variety of marketing strategies that are uniquely suited to your business. Furthermore, the invaluable knowledge a good marketing agency provides you with is likely to prove useful well into the future.
When searching for the right marketing agency, make sure to look for ones that have ample experience working with businesses like yours. For example, if your business relates to the healthcare industry in any way, keep an eye out for a highly-rated healthcare marketing agency.
You’ve Yet to Determine Your Target Audience
In order for your marketing efforts to be truly effective, you’ll need to have a solid sense of who you’re trying to reach with them. In the absence of a clearly defined target audience, you’re liable to have trouble deciding on the types of promotional endeavors to focus on, as well as the types of outlets that are most deserving of your time and resources.
So, before you decide on where to direct your marketing budget, take some time to think about who your target audience is. For example, if you’re after an older demographic, you may want to consider buying commercial spots on local TV and radio outlets and/or purchasing ad space in local newspapers and circulars. Alternatively, if your target demo skews younger, your marketing dollars are likely to be best-spent on search engine optimization (SEO), ad space on popular websites, social media promotion and other digital endeavors.
You Aren’t Properly Utilizing Social Media
Considering how many people use the web’s most popular social platforms on a daily basis, it isn’t hard to see why so many businesses have become enamored with social media over the last decade. So, if you aren’t currently seeking to maximize your business’s presence on said platforms, it’s time to rethink your approach to social media. Not only should your business have accounts on every social media mainstay, those accounts should be updated on a daily basis.
Although the ideal number of updates differs by platform, you should aim to post at least one or two new updates on each account every day.
Furthermore, your posts should contain eye-catching imagery and be built around the idea of audience engagement. By extension, make sure to respond to the various questions and comments you receive from followers – and non-followers – in an expedient and friendly manner.
Your Business Has Unfavorable Online Reviews
Given how important online reviews are to modern consumers, it’s only natural that businesses with less-than-stellar reviews would have trouble attracting patrons. With this in mind, make a point of being as courteous and obliging as possible in all of your customer interactions. By extension, you and your staff should be willing to own up to mistakes and do everything in your power to make amends for them. Just remember – bad service is synonymous with bad reviews, and good service is synonymous with good reviews.
Effective marketing is vitally important to the success of any small business that has yet to establish itself. As such, sitting idly by and hoping that positive word of mouth will magically spread is unlikely to work out in your favor. Additionally, having no prior experience in small business marketing is an acceptable excuse for leaving the success of your enterprise up to chance. So, if your current approach to marketing has failed to make a splash, consider the advice outlined above.