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Small Business Marketing Basics
This document provides an overview of small business marketing basics. It discusses the importance of marketing to attract and retain customers and introduces various marketing techniques. These include defining your brand, understanding your target audience, developing marketing strategies across different channels like websites, social media, email, advertising, and community involvement. The document emphasizes integrating marketing messages across all platforms and that effective marketing is an ongoing process.
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Small Business Marketing Basics
- 1. Small Business Marketing Basics or … A Tree Falling in the Forest
- 2. About Hammster Media© Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt Chief Hammster Transplanted New Yorker … Former Journalist Services include: • PR/Marketing • Social Media/Web Content • Writing/Editing • Graphic Design/Publications/Promotional Materials • Communications Plans
- 3. Falling Trees You canhave the greatest product or service in the world, but if no one knows about it, who cares? Don’t be the tree falling in the forest that no one hears.
- 4. What is Marketing? Everything you do to get your potential customers and your product or service together. The name of the game is ATTRACTING & RETAINING a growing base of satisfied customers.
- 5. Your Identity You can’tbe effective at marketing until you think through: WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU HAVE TO OFFER
- 6. Your Products orServices • What is your product? • What need does it fulfill? • How is it different and unique? • Why should people buy it?
- 7. Size Up theCompetition Who is your Competition? – Current – Potential – Substitute
- 8. Learn from Them •Territory • Customers • Distribution • Price/Value • Growth Plans • Marketing Strategy
- 9. Use What YouLearned Become more competitive • Collect Info • Interpret Info • Evaluate • Respond • Become different • Become stronger
- 10. Brand Yourself Get your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem. A Good Brand: – Delivers your message clearly – Confirms your credibility – Connects your target prospects emotionally – Motivates the buyer – Builds loyalty
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- 23. Market Who Are Your Customers? • Create your ideal customer/client • What are their buying behaviors? • How do they get their information?
- 24. How Do YouReach Them?
- 25. Marketing Techniques • New! New ! New! • Become a valuable resource • Separate yourself from the competition • Promote the end result • Media – press releases, calendar items, relationships with reporters
- 26. More Marketing Techniques •Anticipate change • Partnerships, referrals, community involvement • Printed materials (posters, flyers, postcards) • Nurture relationships
- 27. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 28. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 29. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 30. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 31. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 32. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 33. Digital Marketing Website …social media … online advertising … SEO
- 34. Email Marketing Emailmarketing is an effective and inexpensive way to communicate with your constituents and clients
- 35. Relationships Never underestimate the power of face-to-face contact • Partnerships • Community presence • Chamber of Commerce • Personal sales • Telephone • Mail and thank yous
- 36. Advertising & Sponsorships Build some $ in your marketing budget for advertising • Local publications • Internet • Radio/TV • Your target market publications • Sponsorships
- 37. Integrate Everything Integrate all your marketing • Emails should lead to your website. • Facebook should go to your website. • Press releases should go to your website. • Ads and flyers should go to your website. • Promote across all platforms.
- 39. “Money follows passion — not the other way around.” – Entrepreneur and marketer David Garland
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Editor's Notes
- #3 Introduce self
- #5 The name of the game is ATTRACTING & RETAINING a growing base of satisfied customers. But before you can start marketing, you need to do a self assessment
- #7 Pick a couple people who might like to brainstorm this.
- #8 Actual – who is doing what you do? Potential -- (rumors of someone up and coming) Substitute -- (a business that may have a different way of fulfilling your customers’ needs)
- #10 IDEAS: Play up your differences. Different price point … new audience niche … a different angle … better customer service
- #11 Strong brands equal strong sales
- #24 Let’s use Williams Orthodontics of Evergreen as an example and brainstorm this.
- #25 STRATEGY is key. You need to have a game plan. Did you know it takes 10 contacts for people to get your message? You need to send it many different ways.
- #26 New – dynamic. Not static. Special offers, coupons, deals, new products or services, change in location, new massage therapist Resource – give back. Come in for a free consultation. Separate yourself – market how you are different. Lower price point, better bargain, more personal service? End results – you’ll feel full from our hearty food. You'll feel better after this muscle relaxing massage. Your troubles will melt away. Your kids will be healthy. Other ideas? Media – press releases when you have real news. NOT just self-promotion, but true news. Special events. Put them on community calendars. Get to know reporters.
- #27 Anticipate change – keep up on what is happening in your market, and make adjustments – or be ahead of the curve. Community – get involved in community events as a sponsor. Have your table at an event. Go to Chamber events. Put your banner up at football games ($ to support school while catching eyes) Printed materials – have up-to-date flyers to pout up or brochures or cards to give out. Postcards, bookmarks. Always they should include your website, QR code if possible, contact info, list of services. Nurture relationships – with customers, other businesses, community leaders, etc.
- #28 Website Every business should be online, with complete info for potential customers, consistent with your brand identity. A restaurant should have hours, location, logo, menu, reviews, etc. If you sell a product, it should be available for purchase online.. SEO – submit your website to search engines, use keywords and tags. Change content frequently. Lots of pics, not too much text per page. SOCIAL MEDIA Social media is a 2-way street, a way to listen and engage your audience.
- #29 A business Facebook page is the top priority. According to Edison Research, 48% of Americans over the age of 12 have a profile on a social network and 30% of those people log on multiple times a day. Facebook is by far the most popular social network: More than 400 million active users 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day Average user has 130 friends People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook Facebook provides the following: an opportunity to increase your audience virally (through friends of friends) a way to engage your audience, to have conversations a place to display relevant photos and videos, which can be highlighted in the Facebook format a place to create events and invite followers to attend a way to disseminate regular updates When people “like” your page and/or your posts, their friends will see it in their news feed, giving your business exposure to a wider audience.
- #30 Twitter Twitter is a global information-sharing micro-blog. Despite what the uninitiated think, this platform is not just about tweeting -- it's about finding people who value the wisdom/content you put out, and about gleaning interesting information from them. But if you’re only talking about yourself, no one wants to listen. Talk about relevant issues to a target audience, as part of an information exchange, and people start to follow you and listen to what you’re tweeting. Regular participation in Twitter – combined with strategic cultivation of relevant Twitter sources (following and being followed) -- can establish your business as a thought leader in the clean energy industry, which would increase the perceived relevance of its quarterly roundtables. Twitter can also be used to find media in your industry and keep them apprised of your business’s relevant developments – upcoming forums, new speakers, etc. Because Twitter can be attached to your Facebook page, you will easily be able to maintain a minimal number of tweets, but I recommend we go beyond that – retweeting, sending messages, responding to every follower with info about upcoming conferences, posting photos. Links and videos, and more.
- #31 Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site. It’s an online bulletin board on which you can display photos and videos. A great way to showcase your products.
- #32 You Tube If you have videos for your product or service, you should have a You Tube channel. There’s also another one called Vimeo that displays fewer ads.
- #33 Google+ Is Google’s challenge to Facebook. It lets you put people in circles – family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc. It is not widely used but I’d keep an eye on it.
- #34 Your business should have a robust Linked In presence, and every employee should be connected to it. You should also follow competitors’ companies and keep an eye on what they are doing.
- #35 Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing available. For a fraction of the cost of bulk mail, it attracts interest and builds desire for your product -- and creates two-way communication. But it needs to be done intelligently and strategically. DO NOT send bulk email with all the email addresses in the “To” field. You will be marked a spammer and blocked by people’s servers. IN addition, it compromises the privacy of your customers. Use a service such as CCC, iC or Mail Chimp. They know how to bypass spammers, let you maintain segregated lists, and help you create beautiful, readable emails that customers want to receive. Emails should be sent at a regular frequency, at the same time each month, and they must go only to emails of people who have requested to communicate with you. There are optimal times and days of the week to send them, depending on audience. All content should reflect company branding. Content should be short, with lots of graphics, bullet points, photos and links. Emails should point readers to your website whenever possible, with calls to action (“Register Now”). The tone should be friendly and accessible so that people will want to read them. There should always be a “Forward to a Friend” button, and links to your social media pages. Sponsors get more benefit from links to their websites.
- #36 Face to face is your most powerful tool, esp. in a mountain community.
- #37 Advertising strategy: WHO (target market), WHAT (product or service), WHY (rationale supporting the benefit). There are lots of reasons to choose different media, but key to remember: Get attention Arouse interest Create desire Motivate ACTION MOST IMPORTANT THING – your message. Call to action.
- #38 Above all, I suggest you create a communications plan so that your every marketing move is purposeful and effective.
- #39 Steve Jobs, the master marketer. ANTICIPATE needs and meet them. Tell people what their needs are and how you can fulfill them.
- #40 One of my favorite quotes. It means you have to care about your product or service, above all! Your passion will translate to sales success.
- #41 People move in, move out. Competition arrives. Other products fill the same need. People drive past your sign every day and don’t notice anymore. You need to constantly find new angles, reinvent, get attention.