According to a 2019 study by Forbes, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year and more than 50% don’t make it to year five. The article goes on to sight eight common reasons small businesses fail.
Lack of marketing came in as reason number four on the list.
If we take a 30,000-foot view of what marketing means and why it is important to both businesses and brands, we can get specific about what a quality marketing approach can do. I’m going to break it down into three focused questions to help you get your marketing strategy off the ground.
Marketing is a broad word and it means different things to different industries so its often hard to understand clearly. Marketing is also sometimes referred to as branding, advertising, sales, reach, promotions, storytelling, and more.
Defining Marketing
In the most traditional and basic dictionary definition, marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. So what are these activities?
Honestly, the opportunities are endless. What started as print advertising and typeset billboards has evolved into social media and e-commerce. As the number of ways to buy and sell grows, so do the opportunities to market your goods and services.
Marketing, no matter how you define it, is important for brands and businesses because it amplifies what you do.
Let’s take a well-known brand like Coca Cola. They are a global brand, you clearly know what they do and the products they have available. Yet they still aggressively market themselves with TV commercials, online ads, community initiatives, and more.
Even the most well-known brands know they need to get their message out repeatedly and in a variety of different ways.
Misunderstanding Marketing
A couple of assumptions often made about building a marketing strategy are cost and how to measure effectiveness.
There is often an assumption of a high price tag or some level of exclusivity that comes with investing in marketing. Large national brands like Coke or Capital One are more likely to have a large budget attached to their marketing efforts. But that doesn’t mean that all marketing efforts have to be expensive to be effective.
In fact, the goal of a quality marketing strategy is to gain qualified leads or customers at as low of a cost as possible.
Another challenge is understanding how successful marketing initiatives are measured. There was a time when businesses knew exactly how many people were viewing a print news paper ad every week, how many households they could mail a postcard to or who was listening to a commercial on the local FM radio station.
Its not that simple these days. There are so many more opportunities to reach people where they are. Technology has made it both easier and harder to reach customers and measure the effectiveness of the methods you can use to do it.
Start With the Foundation
So how do you know where to start? Or how do you know which areas will give you the biggest bang for your buck? Is it better to do a lot of different things or just focus on a few?
Before you even start the list of possible paid advertising opportunities you can afford, you need to get really specific on a few things about your business or service.
- What do you offer
- Who needs it
- Do they know about you
These questions give you answers that become the foundation of your strategy. Once you get a clearer picture together on what you offer and who to offer it to, it gets easier to see the ways in which you need to become visible to those individuals, how much you can invest and how to know if your strategy is bringing in results.
You don’t need a marketing degree to get started on a marketing strategy, you just need to start with a solid foundation and work your way up the process.
The three questions I shared today: what do you offer, who do you offer it to, and do they know about you are questions that only you can answer about your business. It’s a place to start that should give you some clarity. This clarity will help you in big ways as you move through the process of building out a marketing strategy.
From these questions, you can evaluate the products and services to offer. Determine which provides the best ROI so you know where to focus your efforts. You can identify your target customers by listing out those who are looking for what you have. Then think critically about how to reach them.
One of the key reasons why I created my brand solutions and marketing business is to help business owners remove the feelings of overwhelm that often comes with creating a profitable marketing strategy. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, I promise!
For more on this topic, including an easy exercise you can do on your own, take a listen to episode 3 of the Motherhood Merged Podcast. I break down the three core questions with a simple pen and paper brainstorming exercise that provides examples and guides through the process to set the foundation of an effective marketing strategy.
