How the heck do I afford marketing???

You’ve put your business plan together. You have sold a few widgets so you know people like and want your product. You have your supply chain figured out, and have ironed the kinks out of your service model. Things are going pretty smoothly.

But you need more customers.

So, you think to yourself, “I know, I need to get some marketing together”. And you call up a marketing company (like ourselves), or do some research on how to do-it-yourself… and discover that you need a bit more cash for marketing than you have just lying around, even for low-cost marketing help like us. So what do you do?

We’ve already talked (many times, in fact) about how important marketing is to your business. But at the end of the day, the reality is that you do need money to get anything from your marketing strategy. Even if you’re doing it all yourself, promotion — getting the word out to people beyond your immediate circle — takes cash, paid directly to vendors like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and such. And while the temptation is to keep marketing expenses as low as possible to preserve profitability right out of the gate, that can be a dangerous gamble.

Spend too little, and you’re not going to have any results because you’re simply not getting in front of enough people. The strategy described in the film Field Of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come” really only applies to massive skyscrapers and amusement parks.

How do you plan to pay for marketing then? What happens if your product margin doesn’t have enough room in it to pay for the marketing you need to do? The good news is that there are options. Here are a few tactics that we advise:

How to find the funds to pay for marketing:

Build marketing expenses into the cost of your goods (or services). This may seem obvious, but a lot of businesses set their pricing without a good sense of how much it will take in marketing spend to get people in the door. A good rule of thumb is to add between 5-10% of the cost of goods (or services) to your base cost assumptions. One of the benefits of this approach is also that as your sales increase, your marketing funds increase (and vice versa.) It’s an easy way to keep expenses in check and to keep your marketing team (or agency) focused on driving revenue, too. The downside is that it requires constant monitoring and adjusting your marketing plans on a regular basis to stay ahead of sales trends and keep from over or underspending.
Build a base marketing budget into your plan on a monthly basis. Think of marketing as no different than any other monthly overhead cost (like your rent). You can tie this to your revenue forecasts as well — you’re really just taking a flat % and applying it to your sales goals on a monthly basis (and, remember, you can build backward from your overhead costs — marketing as well as location, payroll, etc — to where you need to price your product). It’s very simple to keep track of your spending, as your targeted spend never moves from day to day. The downside is that if you miss your revenue, and still spend the total marketing budget, your bottom line suffers accordingly.
Bonus: Establish a “co-op” marketing fund with your vendors. If you’re buying products from vendors and selling them at a markup, you can often build the cost of marketing into your purchase agreements. You simply ask your vendors to provide a specific % of your purchases back to you in the form of a marketing fund. The downside of this approach is that you’ll need to keep an eye on your cost of goods and make sure your vendors aren’t building more than the agreed-upon percentage into your purchases. This approach also works with service providers as well – call it a “referral” fee in that case.

In any event, it’s still important to make sure you’re tracking the results of your marketing efforts and reconciling your spend at the end of every month to make sure your efforts are delivering what you need them to deliver… But we’ve written about that, too.

Happy marketing (and budgeting!),
Theron & Katie

Six quick Marketing troubleshooting tips (or why marketing is like baking bread)

Marketing a small business is a bit like making bread. You add all the right ingredients, do the right steps, and if you know what you’re doing, you end up with great results. But go a little bit wrong along the process – knead it too much, let it rise too long, mess up the ingredients – and you’ll find yourself without much to sink your teeth into.

Before you run off sobbing to your desk, let me give you that glimmer of hope, though: sure, good marketing can take a bit of experience, but just like making bread, ANYONE ACTUALLY CAN DO IT. You just need to practice a bit.

Play with the ingredients. Tweak your technique. Stick with it. Soon enough you’ll be making lots of bread.

(Yes, that last pun was intended. I refuse to apologize)

With that in mind, we thought we’d put together a few ways people get off-track in their marketing efforts. We hope it can help you tweak your technique for better results.

Ask yourself:

Have you made it very, very clear what your product is and why people would want it? Remember, even though the “why” of a product or service is super obvious to us, it’s not always obvious to someone who isn’t familiar with our business. I can’t tell you how many websites I’ve visited – this is especially pernicious with SAS companies – and couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the heck they were selling. Pro tip: consult a complete stranger and have them review your website, marketing copy, or ad to make sure they’re clear on what you’re selling and why they might want it. Second pro tip: the “why” can be shown with good product imagery or graphics, of course, not just text.
Have you made it super easy for people to buy your product or contact you? A lot of business owners want to include all the information that they possibly can, in the mistaken opinion that it will help sell the product. In reality, that just tends to add unnecessary complexity to websites and ads. Instead, make your ads simple and focus on the most important points. Keep your websites clean and spare. And limit the number of clicks between a customer’s arrival to your site and a sale or lead form. The last thing people want to do is wade through tons of miscellaneous information or web pages to figure out how to buy your thing.
Are you showing them too much selection? Yes, you can show too much sometimes. This applies both to ads (please don’t list all your services or show lots of products in a single ad) and also to e-commerce sites. Despite examples set by behemoths like Amazon, offering every last thing you ever sold on your website just makes it harder for customers to find the thing they actually want (remember, Amazon has powerful purchase history and search algorithms that help you find stuff you’re likely to want – your eCommerce platform probably isn’t that sophisticated). Instead, look at your sales data and focus your attention on the items that you know sell well. Just like Goldilocks, you need to find the balance between having too few options and too many.
Are you targeting the audience that is most likely to buy your product or service? Remember, marketing is a simple formula: get the right message in front of the right audience, as often as possible. If you have sales or customer data, use that to define your audience (check out our blog on the subject here). Then make sure you’re using that information to choose your marketing channels (where your ads will appear) and your targeting criteria for digital advertising. And be aware that targeting may change from product to product. For instance, if you’re a masseuse but you’re offering a massage training course, your targeting is likely very different for those ads than they would for your normal massage services.
Are your ads eye-catching? Sound obvious, right? But also often overlooked. It’s pretty easy to put together an ad that says what you want it to say, but completely forget to make sure that people will see it when they’re leafing through the paper or clicking through a website. Keep your text to a minimum and use great imagery (bonus points if it has faces… people like faces). For more on building great ads, see here.
Are people seeing your ads enough? This is a particular challenge for smaller ad budgets since smaller budgets often lead to less frequency (a marketing term that means how many times each person will see the ad over a period of time). And less frequency means poorer results. It’s not just that your ad is showing up less – with lower frequency, ads actually don’t perform as well. You often see click-through rates go up as frequency goes up. Pro tip: if you have a small budget, limit your audience size, either by demographic or geographic targeting. Sure, you can sell your product across the U.S., but you might want to limit yourself to the areas most likely to buy your product so that more people can see your ads more times.

Sure, there are other things we could troubleshoot, but those are the biggies, and probably enough for now. Really, just take the time to practice and play with your results. And remember, just like you know good bread is possible (you’ve seen it and eaten it), know that good marketing is equally possible. Sure, it sometimes takes time to find the right recipe, but, yes, folks, you do it!

Happy small business marketing,
Katie & Theron

Quiz: is your business ready for a marketing campaign?

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is at the right place to get the most out of a marketing campaign.

In our experience, most small businesses think that good marketing is essential to their business.

But is it always?

Gasp! We’re a marketing company, and we’re asking this? (You should know by now that we try to be a different type of marketing company, but enough about us). The reality is that not all businesses, especially very small or very new businesses, are ready to get the most out of a marketing campaign. And there’s nothing more frustrating for a business owner — or, frankly for a marketing consultant — than when a company spends money that is a stretch for them and doesn’t get the results they want.

To prevent this sort of thing, here’s a quick quiz to see if you’re really ready to spread your marketing campaign wings:

1. Do you have a product or service that people want?

Yes: go on to the next question
No, or you don’t know: pause here and do some interviews with potential customers. Get honest feedback, from people you trust to give you real feedback. Is your product/service good quality for the price? Do people need it? Don’t just listen to your friends and family (who love you and support you no matter what); get the hard truth from people who don’t care about you. This may be a painful process, but it’s a lot more painful to invest in a lot of marketing and find out that people don’t want what you’re selling.

Why this matters: this is pretty self-explanatory. If people don’t want what you’re offering, no amount of marketing lipstick will help the pig. The reason we bring it up at all is because people can often become so invested in an idea (or the dream of being an entrepreneur) that they don’t do a develop and research it properly before they spend money on it.

2. Are you priced right?

Yes: go on to the next question
No, or you don’t know: see above; do some focus groups and/or play with your pricing until you get to that sweet spot

Why this matters: pricepoint is a huge part of any brand, and a large part of how customers perceive you. Your brand needs to reflect your price point, and your price point needs to appeal to the people you are targeting. If you miss on these fronts, you’ll learn an expensive lesson by driving people to a product or service they won’t buy — or worse, won’t buy and will complain all over social media how pricey you are.

3. Do you have a website that you know works to convert customers?

Yes: go on to the next question
No: build one and test it thoroughly (note, this is a really good time to involve experienced marketing help in order to achieve results)

Why this matters: if your website doesn’t work, you won’t sell anything, no matter how many people you convince to visit. This is especially true for extremely competitive industries; you’ll lose every time if people are comparing you to others in your field, and your site isn’t great. Of course, if you’re a brick and mortar company you may say this doesn’t matter as much — and, true, it doesn’t matter as much, but in this day and age, it still matters. Don’t kid yourself.

4. Do you have a track record of sales?

Yes: go on to the next question
No: proceed with caution to the next question

Why this matters: a sales track record shows that your funnel works. It shows that people want your product, think the price is reasonable, find your site or store compelling, and will ultimately purchase. In other words, it’s a proof-of-concept for your company. It means that starting a marketing campaign to drive more people to your business is highly likely to be effective (assuming the campaign is built right and targeted correctly). That said, if you’re a new company, the fact that you don’t have a track record of sales doesn’t mean that a marketing campaign won’t work; it just means that you don’t know, yet, and should test the waters with caution. Of course, if you have been in business for a while and have never really managed to sell all that much, you may want to take a good hard look at the rest of the questions in this quiz.

5. Is there something, like a lot of bad reviews or other reputational issues, that may stop people from buying your product/service?

No: go on to the next question
Yes: pause a bit and work into repairing your reputation, or fixing the issue that causes problems. Do you know you have trouble fulfilling orders on time? Fix that problem. Bad reviews? Do everything you can to get a lot of really great reviews to balance out the bad ones

Why this matters: Marketing delivers potential customers, but it can’t make them buy. If people are researching your company or your product and read a lot of bad reviews, or hear from their neighbors or Facebook friends about a poor experience, they’ll go elsewhere. You don’t want to spend money driving customers to you only to have them flee in fear.

6. Is now a good time to advertise to your audience?

Yes: it seems all systems are go! Go ahead and launch your marketing campaign!
No: hold off until the timing is better.

Why this matters: there is nothing that will kill a great marketing campaign faster than launching something when people aren’t buying it. Most businesses have a sales cycle of ups and downs throughout the year (think of painters, for instance; nobody is thinking of having the exterior of their house painted in November). Or there may be larger issues at play, from a recession to a global pandemic. Don’t spend money trying to attract customers when customers don’t want to buy.

This may all sound pretty obvious, but unfortunately, it still needs to be said. Too many small businesses make the mistake of thinking that marketing might be able to “fix” their business when things aren’t going the way they’d hope. Unfortunately, marketing isn’t a magic bullet.

In fact, there’s an old saying in the industry that nothing shows up a broken business like great marketing. The best marketing can do — even the very best marketing — is to attract lots of people who are likely to buy your product and service. It doesn’t make up for bad service, poor reviews, a product or service nobody wants, slow ship times, or a myriad of other blemishes. Don’t expect it to.

To recap then, marketing is an absolutely essential part of a thriving business ecosystem. You’re only very rarely going to be able to grow and expand without it. But it isn’t a fairy godmother that will wave it’s wand and get you sales without any other effort.

Our advice? Get your business house in order, THEN spring for the marketing campaign. That will ensure you get the most bang from your marketing buck.

Happy small business marketing,

Katie & Theron

At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer marketing advisory, strategic planning, and marketing services for small businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing — from search marketing and social media marketing to website strategy and direct mail 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.

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Content marketing: when are you really ready to publish?

AKA: How to get past the doubts and get your content marketing program firing.

It would be awesome if your computer had a little pop-up timer (like a Thanksgiving turkey) that popped up to let you know your latest blog or social media post was “ready”, wouldn’t it? Then you wouldn’t be constantly second-guessing what you’ve written, agonizing over every last comma and semicolon, wanting to make sure it’s absolutely PERFECT before publishing to the world wide web…

But the reality is that no such device exists, right?

The good news is that we really don’t need any fancy gimmicks to know when our marketing content is “ready” for prime time. The fact is, it’s probably ready much earlier than we think.

Frankly, we’re our own worst critics… and we’re really much more critical than we need to be. A few of the common pitfalls we face are:

Knowing Too Much. As the owners of our own businesses, we are sometimes just too close to things to be good judges of what constitutes useful information for our audience (aka customers). We fall prey to the assumption that everyone knows as much about our business as we do, and therefore torture ourselves trying to come up with something never-before-written or talked about in our industry. But the reality is that no one knows as much about our own business as we do, and so we can’t assume they have the same knowledge level; in fact, they undoubtedly don’t. So don’t be afraid to talk about the basics from time to time. It’s a good refresher even to people who have some familiarity with your industry.
Telling Too Much. Because we know our own industry inside and out, we sometimes feel like we have to include everything we know… in every article. The fact of the matter is that good short-form content (like blogs or social posts) generally stays pretty close to conveying a single idea or topic. More than that and we risk losing our audience. Tell it well, and then get out. Just for reference, blogs are usually in the 500-1000 word range. If you find you need more than that, you may be trying to convey too much information and might want to consider whether you’d be better suited with longer-form content, like a whitepaper or ebook.
Criticizing Too Much. We are our own worst critics. Heck, it’s part of what makes us successful business people! But it’s worth remembering that we’re probably not award-winning authors (unless you are, in fact, a writer by trade), and no one really expects us to write flawlessly. Nobody is looking at your subject with the same magnifying lens that you do, or picking apart every last thing write about (like you do). Conveying a good idea effectively is all we really need to do. So as long as there are no blatant typos or spelling mistakes, and your content makes sense and actually conveys useful information, then it’s probably ready for publication. Pro tip – sometimes reading what you’ve written out loud will help. If something sounds strange when you say it, you may want to re-word it.
Re-Writing Too Much. If you’re baking biscuits and you knead the dough too much, the final product isn’t flaky and delicious — it ends up tough and dry. Your content is much the same! While it’s important to edit and make sure what you’ve written is accurate and reads well, don’t rewrite and redo your content endlessly, or you’ll suck all the life out of it.

One last pro tip: if in doubt, get a second opinion. Since we’re often our own worst enemy when it comes to content marketing, it also sometimes helps to have a friend or family member take a look at what we’ve written before sending it out into the world. We’ve both written many things that we thought were bad or not worth publishing, but other people gave us a different perspective! Again, we often “know too much” about our business and aren’t always capable of seeing the forest for all the trees around us.

Finally, what’s the most important way to know when your content is ready to publish? When you finish writing it! The worst thing you can do is NOT publish because you’re waiting to make your blog, post, etc. perfect, or you’re wondering if your topic is OK, after all, or you are questioning if people will care.

It’s much more important to continue to get marketing content out on a regular basis — in order to build awareness for your business — than it is to agonize over every last adjective.

If it’s accurate from your point of view, and not actually offensive to people, put it out there and see how your audience reacts. If they hate it, you can always edit and republish or delete it altogether.

But they won’t. Because as the owner of your business and expert on your subject, you’ll be providing them with valuable information… even when you don’t think you are!

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.

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The “this is not really your job” weekly small business marketing checklist

Picture this: you’re busy, doing your job. Or, as the owner of a small business, let’s say, “jobs”. Between the juggling of customers, accounting, taxes, scheduling, stressing about the current economic/health situation, and managing your staff, suddenly someone brings it to your attention that your website is down.

Bum, bum….

And, worse, you check on your web traffic on Google Analytics, and it shows that your site has been down for weeks. Your heart sinks. Imagine how many potential (and past) customers have visited during that time, only to leave with a rather poor impression of your business.

Because you were too busy — with other, super important things — to check.

Hey, we get that. As a small business owner, making sure your marketing is up and running at all times is not your full-time job. And in a perfect world, you should be able to just set things up, get them running and forget about them. But unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world.

To make it a little easier, though, we’ve put together our 10-minutes-once-a-week checklist to catch marketing problems before they turn nasty. Here goes:

Make sure your website is up and running, and check some of the most important links to make sure they are working. If anything’s broken, fix it.
Go to Google Analytics*, and do a quick scan. Has your web traffic dropped or changed in any dramatic way? If you see something anomalous, dig down a little deeper to see if you can find out what’s up. If your social traffic is down, for instance, you may want to go to your social media ad platform(s) and make sure everything is running fine.
Check your social media accounts. Are there any comments, questions, or reactions that you’ve missed? The last thing you want is someone’s profanity-laced off-topic comment staying up on a popular post for weeks.
Check for new reviews. If you see a bad one, it’s best practice to respond to it as soon as you can.
Quickly scan your advertising platform(s). Is everything running as normal? Are there any alerts? They will tell you if something is up, like your card on file has expired and your ads aren’t running.
Bonus: If you have a content marketing program, check for comments. If you need to review them before they go live, do so. If you don’t review them, and there’s a bad one, deal with it.

There, that’s it. Of course, we recommend taking more time than this once a month or so to really dig into your data and test and tweak your ads (should you be inclined that way), but for the most part, doing this diligently every week will keep you confident your marketing basics are in order and healthy.

As always, happy small business marketing.

Stay safe and healthy, friends,

Katie & Theron

*Don’t have a Google Analytics account? We HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you set one up so you can monitor your web traffic and the effectiveness of your advertising.

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