How to succeed in marketing your business: learn the patience game

My husband recently shared a Masters in Business podcast with me in which the Winklevoss Twins (of The Social Network/Facebook fame) were interviewed. You can listen for yourself, here. The point that hit me the strongest was that their investment strategy relies on a little-appreciated trait: patience.

In fact, studies have shown that most professional investors are quite good at buying great investments. Where many of them fall down is in selling them; the majority make great selection decisions, then get cold feet, start to question their choices, and sell too early.

The Winklevoss twins didn’t become some of the first Bitcoin billionaires by selling too soon, trust me.

You’re probably wondering about now what in all that’s precious this has to do with marketing. Frankly, quite a lot.

One of the worst marketing mistakes we see small business owners make is putting together a solid marketing plan, taking the time (and sometimes money) to set it up, setting it running… And then, before it has a chance to work, they start questioning their decisions and end up shutting it all down. We see it again and again, and it breaks our hearts.

Of course, I totally get how scary it is to spend your hard-earned money on marketing, especially if you click the “on” switch and… nothing happens right away. But the reality is that—for many, many, many businesses—you don’t get an immediate fire hose of demand when you turn on your marketing programs for the first time. Sure, if you sell reasonably-priced items through an e-commerce site, you’ll find a direct flip-the-switch connection between your marketing programs and your sales, but for business with high price points, or businesses that provide services that people don’t need all the time (think realtors or house painters), or B2B businesses, or businesses that have a long sales process, you should expect it to take some time before your marketing starts to “kick in”.

This delay is particularly amplified with small businesses, which usually have smaller marketing budgets and therefore less marketing reach. And it is even more amplified if your primary marketing approach is content marketing.

Like any investment, your marketing needs time to mature.

Now, we’re in no way saying you should keep throwing good money after bad on a marketing strategy that doesn’t work. But we are suggesting you should give it some time before you call the time-of-death. How much time you should wait will depend on your business and how long your sales cycle is. In the meantime, here are some clues that things may be starting to happen, whether you’re seeing closed deals or not:

Your web traffic is up—and, even more exciting—your time on site and number of pages viewed has gone up (you’ll need Google Analytics to figure this out)
Your ads and/or posts on social media are getting good engagement (likes, shares, comments), or your search ads are performing well.
You’re feeling the “buzz”. If you’re paying attention, you’ll often start to feel a pick up in interest through various channels. Keep your feelers out.

Of course, if, after the appropriate amount of time (equal to approximately how long, on average, it takes people to buy your product or service), you’re still only getting buzz, web traffic, and engagement, it may be time to take a good hard look at what’s going on. Check out how to troubleshoot your marketing strategy here.

In closing, I want to share the story of a client of ours, who has a very long sales cycle. Literally about a week after I had given him my patented, “sometimes marketing needs time” speech, he emailed me to tell me that he’d just gotten a new client from an event he’d done a couple of years before; the person had actually held on to a flyer (the very one on the right) in case he’d one day need our client’s service. Point made, and some. I could have saved my breath.

Stay strong, my friends. Good things come to those with the guts to wait.

Happy small business marketing,

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, or even your phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. We specialize in building efficient marketing programs to grow your business without blowing the bank.

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Five magic ways to make more time for marketing your business.

The other week, I put off writing our Guidepost blog maybe half a zillion times. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I had so much client work that I needed to do. There was a lot on my plate, and the blog—being a self-set deadline—was an easy one to let slide.

Normally, I wouldn’t mention this, because I’m a marketing professional, so it’s a little embarrassing that I’m putting off doing my own marketing. And ultimately I did write the blog, and while it wasn’t my most brilliant effort, I still think it had good information that will hopefully help a small business owner somewhere make better marketing decisions.

So, why bring it up at all?

The thing is, I’m not alone. Every small business owner and startup founder I have ever worked with struggles with this same problem: how do you balance the marketing needs of your company with all the other stuff that keeps you working late at night? So often, marketing gets postponed because it feels less mission-critical. To the point where marketing projects stretch out months… or worse.

The problem with this is that marketing actually IS mission-critical to your business.

Remember, marketing isn’t just traditional advertising (like an ad in the paper). It’s everything to do with how you’re interacting with current and future customers in order to generate new sales. And if you don’t do it, you’re not going to get new customers. Full stop.

Let’s talk about what you can do about this. I realize that you’re not going to get more time in the day, but I’ve found the following tips help:

Prioritize marketing. Yes, it’s a bit captain obvious, but it needs to be said. What is prioritized gets done. I’m not suggesting you always prioritize marketing over everything else you have to do, but try making marketing your top priority for one week a month, a day or two a week, or even a couple of days a month. You’ll be amazed at the amount you can get done.
Right-size your marketing plan. The best way to make the idea of working on your marketing overwhelming is to aim for the stars and try to do too much. Design your marketing strategy for the level of time you know you can commit to it, with a timeline that is reasonable to execute.
Break things up into bite-sized chunks. When a marketing project feels huge, it can seem impossible to put enough time aside for it. Instead, break projects up into an hour here, and an hour there. Sure, it may take longer to get done that way, but it won’t overwhelm you—and taking a while to get done is much better than never getting started.
Accept good enough. Most entrepreneurs are a bit type A (ya think?), and that means they want everything they do—marketing included—to be perfect. But the reality is that good is usually just as effective as great when it comes to marketing, and definitely better than not at all. If that sales presentation deck you’ve been working on is stuck, try taking a hard eye to it, deciding what slides are mission-critical and ditching the rest. At least for now. That way you can get the deck done enough, and ready to use, much, much sooner.
Lose your fear. This isn’t really a time management issue, no. But the part of the business that is the least comfortable for small business owners is the part that gets put off the most (for me it’s doing taxes). If you feel over your head with your marketing, it’s likely to be the last thing you put your mind to. Instead, get a mentor, or hire a part-time adviser (shameless plug: we do that), so that you feel better in your marketing skin.

Hopefully, these tips help, but at the very least know that you’re not alone.

Now, get busy and do some marketing!

Happy small business marketing,

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, or even your phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. We help you grow your business without blowing the bank.

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The small business guide to making a great advertisement.

Let’s talk about advertisements. On a macro level, there are two parts to effective marketing: deciding the right things to do, and then doing them well. Or, in other words, strategy and execution.

We talk a lot about strategy around here (maybe too much?), so it’s probably time to talk a little more about the execution part.

For instance, let’s talk about ads. Let’s say you’ve decided where to place an ad, and bought the ad placement (in the local paper, on the web, on social media, or heck, maybe on the side of the bus)… now how do you make sure you’re not wasting that investment?

It’s actually not as hard as you might think to develop an effective ad. Here are a few tips:

Ad dos:

Put yourself in the mind of your perfect customer. Think about what would they would care about. If you were them, what would make you respond to the ad? Be critical.
State your value proposition clearly and succinctly. What value do you bring to your customers? What matters to them? Again, make sure you’re thinking like a customer, not talking about the things you care about most.
Use great, eye-catching imagery. If you’re a house painter, use before and after shots of your work (everybody loves before and afters). Do you sell pretty things? Invest in good photography of a few of your products. Same for restaurants; take mouthwatering pictures of a few of your most popular dishes (Ba Bar in Seattle does this really well). In today’s media-drowned world, you have to up your game when it comes to imagery.
Put some thought into your headline: it should be strong and impactful, but also make it clear what the ad is about. Witty is good, but don’t sacrifice clarity on the altar of wit unless you’re really good at this advertising stuff.
Remember your name, logo, tagline, and contact information (or call to action button, for web). You’d be surprised how many people forget the basics.
Make sure the most important information is the most prominent. Don’t make the least important thing on the ad the thing people see first (and therefore remember). Usually, your headline and your call to action are going to be your most important parts.
Consider a call to action*. What do you want people to do when they see your ad? Call you? Click on a button? Visit your website? Make sure you clearly tell them what the next step is.

Ad don’ts:

Talk only about yourself. Remember, nobody cares about you, or your business. Instead, they care about what you and your business can do for them.
Write too much. The last thing people want is to see a big chunk of text they need to wade through. And trust me, they won’t read it. If you absolutely MUST include a bunch of information, break it up in chunks or use bullets.
Try and do the graphic design yourself. Yes, we mean this. Just because you can use Photoshop doesn’t mean you can create a professional-looking ad. And as something that will make your first impression to potential customers, don’t you want it to be professional rather than amateur? Don’t skimp on this one.
Cram in too much stuff. We see this all the time; businesses want to make so many points that the result is cluttered, has no clear hierarchy of information, and is the visual equivalent of a headache waiting to happen. Remember your ad has one job: to get people to contact you or look at your product, and you don’t need to tell them all the nitty-gritty details to make that happen (that’s what your website is for). Less information is actually often better, because you can direct their focus on the most important point(s). Take a look at these brilliant ads; getting people intrigued is a large part of the battle.

And there you have it.

OK, sure, there’s an art to great advertising, and you may never win a Clio award just by following these guidelines. But people spend hundreds of thousand of dollars hiring the best and brightest advertising minds to create that stuff. And that’s all fine and good, if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But if you leave your MadMen aspirations aside, it’s not that hard to create a good, solid, hardworking, and effective ad. And, frankly, effective is what matters.

Happy small business marketing,

Katie & Theron

*you’ll notice we say, “consider a call to action”. We take the somewhat unpopular position that not every ad needs—or, frankly, should have—a call to action. Seriously, it’s a weird knee-jerk reaction people have: pull a string, and the puppet shouts CTA! We do like the rigor of thinking about what you want people to do with an ad, however, because it reminds you of the ultimate purpose. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go out of your way to force one to work. More on this in a later post. I promise.

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, or even your phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. Our goal is to help you grow your business without blowing the bank.

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Bad calls are gonna happen: a small business guide to marketing campaign fails.

What do marketing campaigns and sports have in common? If you pay attention to any broadcast sports on a regular basis, you’ve been impacted by the so-called Bad Call. The refs make an absolutely insane ruling that leaves the fans absolutely flabbergasted, screaming things at the TV like:

“There’s no way that wasn’t a catch!”

“Come on, refs, whattya have to do to get a pass interference penalty in this league? He was flat-out mauling the guy!!”

“He had it in the end zone, that’s a touchdown in anyone’s book!!!”

But, in spite of all the pleas, taunts and outright threats from the coaches, players, and fans in the stadium, the Bad Call stands. And history is changed in the minds of said coaches, players and fans… forever. They’re robbed of their rightful place in the Big Game while the undeserving beneficiaries of the Bad Call go on to win it all.

Somehow, though, life goes on and everyone’s hard at work on the practice field again in no time.

Oddly enough, this phenomenon is not limited to sports. Bad calls are a daily, even hourly, occurrence in the world of marketing campaigns. A small business owner might spend weeks planning the “perfect strategy” and getting their creative just right only to have their campaign fall spectacularly flat almost immediately after it’s launched. (This is the point where many people throw their hands up and say “well, marketing clearly doesn’t work.”)

Marketing campaign fails and what to do about them

The fact that your marketing campaign sucked is not the problem. It’s going to happen at some point. Heck, it happens even to extremely experienced marketers sometimes. It’s what you do next that really counts. As an entrepreneur, you have two basic options:

1) You can choose to spend all your energy bemoaning the failure and looking for a judge to step in and magically fix everything.

Or…

2) You can take a step back and dispassionately analyze what happened so you can improve your next campaign. Some common things to check first:

Are you looking at the right metrics? Just because your campaign didn’t generate immediate sales doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had other beneficial results, like driving awareness for your business or filling your conversion funnel earlier than your other marketing activities. You may just need to adjust your time horizon and wait a bit longer to learn the true impact of your campaign.
Did you target the right audience? No matter how fantastic your cupcake business is, if you accidentally targeted Facebook groups devoted to a low-carb lifestyle, you’re not likely to succeed.
Did your ads actually run as planned? It’s worth taking a quick look to make sure your campaign actually ran… you’ll be surprised how often silly things happen that are easily fixed.
Do all the links in your ad go where you think they go? Also known as “Always test every component of your emails, ads, etc. BEFORE you send it out.” You may be driving a ton of business… just to the wrong location.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring this up, and it requires brutal honesty and courage as an entrepreneur to answer “yes” to this one: Were you trying something best left to the experts? Or would it be better to hire some outside help to manage certain pieces of your marketing? If you’ve never launched an AdWords or Facebook retargeting campaign, for example, learning as you go is usually not a recipe for success.
Finally… and this one’s tough, but has to be said- were you simply too emotionally involved with the concept to begin with, disregarding all the warning signs along the way that this might not be the best idea? I ask this from painful personal experience… There’s nothing wrong with loving your idea, just make sure it’s worthy of your love first.

And the list goes on. The point is, it’s important to stop beating yourself up and instead make sure you really understand what happened so you don’t repeat the same mistakes in future campaigns. One Bad Call is not a reason to throw in the towel and quit the game forever. Or, frankly, abandon marketing.

But, for the record? Yeah, that was DEFINITELY pass interference.

Happy small business marketing,

Theron & Katie

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, or even your phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. Our goal is to help you grow your business without blowing the bank.

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In marketing, it’s OK to repeat yourself. Really. It’s OK to repeat yourself.

Important newsflash: using messaging once, or covering a topic in a blog post once, or executing a brilliant marketing strategy once, does not make it off-limits for the rest of all time.

As humans, we tend to get bored with things that we experience on a regular basis, whether it’s eating at the same place for lunch every day, listening to the same songs on the way to work on your way home, watching Star Wars 76 times in a row without break (well, OK, maybe that’s going a little far–it IS a classic after all). And by extension, we assume that others around us are likewise tired of those things, just because we may be.

And that’s where we’re wrong.

Indulge me for a minute here. If I’ve eaten Blueberry Pop-Tarts every morning for a month, and have you over for brunch one weekend, I can’t just assume YOU won’t want Blueberry Pop-Tarts too. You probably haven’t had one every day like I have (they were on sale at Costco, so cut me some slack here) Heck, for all I know you’ve NEVER experienced the wonderful deliciousness that is a Blueberry Pop-Tart. The fact that I remember all the Pop-Tarts served in my house doesn’t have any correlation to whether or not you are sick of Pop-Tarts. In fact, you may like coming to my house specifically FOR the Pop-Tarts.

Similarly, when it comes to marketing, it’s actually beneficial to continue to repeat and reinforce messaging to your audience over an extended period of time.

We’ve all heard the stunning statistics regarding how many messages we’re subjected to every day (the last Yankelovich number I saw indicated that we each see upwards of 5,000 messages per day). Personally, I’m doing well to recall 10 of them on a good day, and I’m actually IN marketing.

Clearly, for any of us to expect stellar and instantaneous customer response just because we’ve done a great job launching our latest brilliant marketing message into that chaotic maelstrom likely qualifies as a workable definition of insanity.

Instead, you need to repeat. What’s that old rule about the format of good presentations? Something like “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell them. Tell ‘em what you want to tell ‘em. Then, in closing, tell ‘em what you just told them.” In other words, repeat. And then repeat again.

So don’t be afraid to repurpose your blog posts, tweeting snippets, posting bits on FaceBook and LinkedIn. For that matter, don’t shy away from rewriting content over and over again, putting a fresh spin on it and making it into a new publication. Take that awesome image you’re running in your Display Network campaign and slather it across your homepage (or vice versa). The odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that your customers haven’t seen it… or if they have, they may need to see it again.

It’s OK to repeat yourself. Really. it’s OK to repeat yourself.

Happy small business marketing,

Theron & Katie

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small business and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, or even your phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. Our goals is to help you grow your business without blowing the bank.

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