Marketing pro-tip: just chill.

Just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday, I have a little gift for you, dear small business owner. One I hope you will accept, and take to heart. If you do, it will give you peace and possibly gratitude. I promise.

Here is my gift, my friends: you have my permission to just chill when it comes to your marketing.

Now, before you get too excited, let me clarify something. I am not telling you that it’s OK to stop marketing your product or service. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. I want you to do more of it.

Whaa??

See, the problem so many small business owners face is perfectionism. They want to do it right. They want their ad, their blog, their post, their what-have-you to be perfect, so they spend enormous quantities of time perfecting it (and sometimes agonizing over it). Time they, as a small business owner with lots of other stuff to do, simply don’t have.

And the reality is that it is better to get in front of potential customers more often, than to get in front of them more perfectly. In other words, we’re talking quality over quantity. Seriously.

One word-perfect, glowing gem of a blog post won’t even come close to the effect of three or four not-so-perfect posts. One ad that has never been “good enough” to publish is definitely not as effective as an ad that people can actually see. Don’t hamstring yourself by searching for the shangri-la of an advertising ideal.

I admit that with this attitude, you’re probably never going to win a Clio Award, and you may never go viral. But, you don’t need to. What you need is to get your messaging out in front of the most potential ideal customers as you can for the money you have. And sometimes that means stepping back from the “perfect or else” ledge and just letting things fly.

Of course, that said, I do have some caveats. ‘Cause there are SOME things you have to pay attention to, whether you’re aiming at perfection or not:

For ads:

make sure your messaging speaks to your perfect customers, clearly tells what it is you do, and (if possible) why you’re better than your competitors
Include contact information so that people can reach you, should they choose to
Remember your logo and URL!
Do your best to make it eye-catching

For content marketing (more on what the heck that is coming soon!):

make sure you are adding value to the reader/viewer
Make sure it’s interesting (or, even better, polarizing!)
Include ways for people to share it
Make sure people read it on your website, or can easily find your website.

Other than that, you’re good. Just relax, and get your word out there. And even better… you know how they say practice makes perfect? Consider this practicing. You might just get to perfect, yet.

Happy small business marketing—and happy thanksgiving!

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small business and startups, including content marketing. 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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How do you know if that great marketing idea will work for your business?

We’ve all had it happen: a salesperson walks in your door (or your inbox) and tells you all about this great small business marketing thing that will attract more customers. You want more customers, you think to yourself. Should you try it? Will it work?

Well, there are two ways to find out. One way is to go ahead and purchase their thing or ad space or what-have-you and see what happens.

Now, let me be clear; I do NOT recommend this method. Not only is it a good way to waste money on speculation, but it actually isn’t a very good test, unless it comes with great built-in analytics.

The other way is to do some basic marketing vetting.

First, does this marketing thing reach your ideal customer at all? (remember your ideal customer?) If the marketing thing is a smartphone app and your best customers are over 70, run away (OK, Theron tells me this is a bad example, since there’s a lot of 70+ers who are super smartphone savvy… but you get my drift).

Second, does it allow you to tell your story in a compelling way? Your logo on a pen doesn’t give much idea about what sets you apart from the competition. A little social video gives you a great platform.

Third, follow a very basic marketing formula. Look at how many of your ideal customers are likely to see your marketing thing for the money you spend on it. Us marketers call that your cost per impression, or CPI*, but really it’s just about being as efficient as possible with your marketing spend.

One thing to remember when you look at how much it costs for each ideal customer to see your marketing thing is the simple fact that you need many, many ideal customers to see that marketing thing before even one walks in your door/visits your website… and how many people walking in your door does it take before you make a sale?

Yeah. Marketing is about scale. You need a lot of people to see your marketing thing before you see results. And you want to make darn sure the cost of getting that result isn’t more than the result you get; in other words, as a rule of thumb your cost to acquire a customer shouldn’t be more than you get from an average sale.

That said, there are some cases where it may make sense to spend more to acquire a customer than you get the first time they purchase from you. If, for instance, you’re a chiropractor or hairdresser, and you know that the vast majority of people who walk in the door will become regular customers with a nice long revenue stream. Or, say you’re a house painter, and you know each customer tends to refer multiple new jobs. Or you’re just getting started, and need to get the word out about your business.

If all this sounds complicated, let me simplify by listing a few things that often don’t pay off:

logo merchandise: most of this usually ends up going to employees or current customers. There’s good reasons to give stuff to both those groups, but don’t expect it to get you new customers
b2b trade conferences: booths at trade conferences often are very expensive, and pull in very few leads. The one exception is if you can get a speaker’s role at the conference. That’s a game changer
print advertising: I hate to say it, but a lot of print advertising has seen its day. Unless your ideal customer is of a generation that tends to read the paper/magazine/pennysaver more than surf the web, be very careful about your print purchases, especially on a small budget
one-off sponsorships: thinking about being a silver sponsor for some charity auction? Absolutely follow your heart if you want to give a donation, but don’t expect a single sponsorship to pull in new customers. The only way sponsorship campaigns really pay off is if you have the budget to do A LOT.

Happy small business marketing,

Katie & Theron

*you may also see CPM (cost per mille, meaning thousand), and CPC (cost per click). CPM tends to be an older marketing metric from the good ol print and TV days. If someone is giving you the cost in CPM, just divide by 1000 to get your cost per impression. Cost per click, on the other hand, is very common today. This means you pay when someone clicks on your digital ad. CPC numbers will be smaller than your cost for impression and will have much better conversion rates.

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The one marketing thing every small business must do

I’m not gonna lie, the list of small business marketing best practices is a long one. And ask ten business owners, and they probably will all have their favorite way of attracting new customers.

But. Out of all those opinions and all those possibilities, I’m going to draw a line in the sand.

If you, as a small business, can only do one marketing-related thing, there’s no doubt in my mind what that one thing is: you must put up a well-thought-out, mobile-friendly, and useful website.

Why? Well, we live in a digital world, folks. It doesn’t matter if you are a 100% brick and mortar boutique, a world-of-mouth only service company, or a side of the road coffee hut. People do their research online. People expect—and will look for—your website.

And here’s the thing. If done well, your website is your business brochure. It is the chance to tell people what is so amazing about your business without ever meeting them in person. It can drive them to through your door with special offers, entice them to submit inquiries, and express to them what makes your business unique. It’s also the one expression of your brand, the one environment, that you completely control. It should not be an afterthought.

Convinced? Good. Now that we’ve got you this far, here are a few dos and don’t on website design (stay tuned for a full how-to-build-your-website blog in the near future):

Do:

Tell people exactly what you do and how you stand out from the competition
Make your preferred method of contact really easy to find
Showcase special products and services
Think about how you want people to use your site, and make sure your site supports that (do you want people in the door of your coffee shop? Showcase how inviting it is. Include a map, and information on events. Want people to ask for more information on your service? Make sure you have a lead form handy and obvious)

Don’t:

Focus so heavily on cool design that people can’t easily navigate to the information they need (pro tip: ask an older relative to go through your site. If they can’t figure it out, you may want to rethink your design. Unless, of course, your target market is super hip young designers!)
Put up a placeholder site and forget about it
Have so little information on your website that people feel like visiting it wasn’t worth it.
Forget to make contact info easy to find
Add a ton of copy. Remember, people don’t read.

Got all that? Here’s one last thought: building a great website doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. There are a lot of website platform companies out there (such as Wix and Weebly) that make it really easy to put up a professional-looking website quite quickly. You don’t need to write a lot. You know your business. Relax, and have fun highlighting what makes your business so great!

Happy small business marketing!

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small businesses and startups, including content marketing. 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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Marketing pro tip: stop talking to the same people.

Ask anyone what marketing is, and most would say that it’s advertising. (We’ll save whether or not that’s really the best definition of marketing to another day.) In other words, they think it’s getting your product or service out in front of new potential customers. Emphasis on the new.

With that in mind, you may be surprised that a lot of small business owners forget to promote their business to people outside their own customer/fan circle.

Why? It’s probably because it’s so easy to post an update on your social media page, and feel like you’re doing something. Or to send an email. But remember, unless you’re actively promoting that post or working hard to recruit new people to your email list, you’re talking to the same people, over and over again. And they are the people who already like you enough to follow you on social media.

I call it shouting into the abyss.

Instead, always remember that your number one goal is to attract new people to your club. (Your number two goal is making sure your customers are repeat customers and tell all their friends, but more on that later).

How do you promote to new people?

Did you just post about a sale or a cool new product on Facebook? Use Facebook ads to promote that post. Just make sure you target it to your ideal customer
Consider search marketing. People who have never heard of you will see your ad when they’re looking for your product.
Having an event? An open house? Promote it to new audiences through social promoted posts, or find community calendars and other grassroots places to list it.

The list goes on (and on) and we’ll cover different ways to promote your business in future posts. In the meantime, however, remember: it’s not going to pull in new customers if you never tell them about it.

Resist the urge to shout into the abyss.

Happy marketing, my friends!

Katie & Theron

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Nobody Cares: the fundamental understanding of great marketing

This may sound harsh (and a little ironic, since I’m writing something for people to read right now), but People. Don’t. Read. They really don’t. They scan, they flip by, they click close.

And they really don’t care about you.

Before you give up in despair, let me tell you how you can use this to your benefit and why this is a good thing. Really!

First, what do you do about it?

Keep it short.
Make it interesting

Seriously, it’s that simple. How do you make it interesting? Make sure it matters to your customer. Don’t talk about yourself (they don’t care). Don’t get in the trap of thinking the things that matter so much to your business (a new brand, for instance, or even opening a new location) are inherently interesting to your community. They only matter if they help your customer. If the connection isn’t obvious, go ahead and point it out. Instead of just posting that you’re opening a new location, write, “we’re opening a new location right next to X grocery store, so you can grab a latte while you shop for the week!”. See what I did, there?

Now for why this is good:

it forces you to keep your messaging crisp,
your offers relevant,
and your content valuable to your customers

In other words, remembering that people just don’t care makes you a better marketer.

Happy small business marketing!

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and services for small business and startups, including content marketing. 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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