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Marketing strategy

A car GPS system with the caption, "How can you reach your customers if you don't know who (and where) they are?"

Marketing targeting: how to pick an audience that won’t waste your money

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” Meaning that, while it can be fun to get in the car and go on an adventure, directionless wandering doesn’t work well if you’re trying to meet a group of friends at a new restaurant for dinner reservations which are set for a specific date and time. Instead,  it’s a better idea to plug the address into Google...
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A wall of vintage advertisements, with the caption, "Think marketing doesn't work? You may be doing it wrong."

Marketing doesn’t work! Or so we’ve heard.

One of the more common things we hear when talking to business owners is, “I’ve tried marketing before and it just doesn’t work.” Other variations are, “I’ve done Facebook marketing before and it didn’t work”, “I’ve tried search marketing and it didn’t work”, “I’ve tried email marketing and it didn’t work”… you get the idea. And indeed, marketing ISN’T a magic cure-all that will instantly turn your business around, and so some of these comments definitely have a kernel of...
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A runner against the sunset, with the caption, "Wanna bring in new customers consistently? Approach your marketing like getting into shape."

What new year’s resolutions and marketing shouldn’t have in common.

The weekend after Thanksgiving I went for my normal morning run in the woods near my house. From my perspective, just another run on just another morning. But, unlike most mornings, the woods were full of runners that didn’t run there much. Or, like, ever. First, good for them. Running is an awesome sport! Second, we all know why they were there: it was the annual post-Thanksgiving feast guilt run. This is not unlike the post-new-year’s-resolution hit-the-gym-fest in January. You...
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A picture of a sculpture of Theseus and the Minotaur, with the caption, "Forget the magic marketing myth of cheap and wildly effective marketing trick. Real, effective marketing is a lot of work. There are no shortcuts, no “get rich quick” schemes, no snake oil solutions."

The Myth of the Magic Marketing Trick

From time to time, we run across people who seem to be convinced that there is a secret arsenal of marketing know-how that can deliver droves of customers at little (or even no) cost. That there’s something that big-company marketers know about that they hide from the little people. All they have to do is discover it, like secret pirate treasure. Unfortunately, this is akin to Magical Thinking, and often equates to people saying urban myth-adjacent things like “well, when so-and-so...
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A woman with shopping bags, and the caption, "What your marketing budget should be is (literally for some companies) the million dollar question."

How much *should* a small business spend on their marketing?

Hands down, the question we get asked the most is about marketing budget – how much a small business should spend on its marketing. And unfortunately, it’s one of the few questions for which there is no concise answer. If you ask the great question-and-answer-box of the internet, you’ll get answers ranging from about 2% of revenue to about 11% or 12%, depending on who you ask, how new your company is (traditional wisdom says you need to spend a...
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