The top five marketing best practices that don’t make sense for small businesses
Good news! I’m going to take a break from telling you all the marketing best practices you should be doing… and, instead, tell you which marketing best practices are simply not worth it for small businesses. Yes, you read that right. I’m going to tell you what not to bother with. Consider it like a wee holiday.
Before I get started on this, let me remind you that these are all marketing best practices. This means, that—if you have the staffing, time resources, and budget to do them, they will make your marketing program stronger. Key phrase, here: “If you have the staffing, time resources, and budget”. Most small to medium businesses, however, simply do not. And none of these “best practices” make a lick of sense if you don’t have the resources to do them well.
The top five marketing best practices that don’t make sense for small businesses
- A presence on every social media platform. Yeah, the big brands have pages and communities on every platform. But you’ll see, if you pay attention, that they have curated content for each of those platforms, designed for the main demographic of the platform. And, I can guarantee you, they have a full-time social media manager, if not a whole troupe of them. If you don’t have this luxury, it’s much better to focus on just one or two that you know you can do really well. Pick the one or two that best reaches your customer base and knock it out of the park. Yes, less is actually more.
- A detailed marketing strategy that uses all marketing channels to meet all customer segments. Again, we’re 100% behind putting together a marketing plan! It’s an absolute necessity. But it doesn’t have to be extremely detailed, and it actually shouldn’t include strategies for all channels. Why? Because I guarantee you that there is no way you have the time resources, staffing, and budget to effectively nail every channel. Instead, think strategically and pick the few channels that you know will work best for you. If you’re not sure which will, talk to a marketing expert (like us!) to get a better idea of what will give you the best bang for your buck.
- An in-depth content and social media calendar for the whole year. Again, this is a great idea… if you have the time and resources. On the pro side, it forces you to plan, and makes sure you hit the important events, like Black Friday. But it’s also hard to find the time to do this. You can get the same benefit from quickly jotting out the most important points of the year and adding them to your calendar, then putting the actual details together on a weekly basis. I find that for many business owners, this actually leads to fresher, more interesting content – and better use of UGC (User Generated Content) – than trying to figure out what to say far ahead of time
- In-depth audience segmentation. OK, you know the drill: yes, this is a good idea… if you have the time. But remember, a segment is only as good as what you do with it. Do you have time to write five times the marketing emails? No? Then having five customer segments may not be worth it for you (though we do recommend building segments as you grow so that, down the road when you do have the resources, you have the segments in place to use). Instead, focus on segments that are no-brainers. For instance, if you have a clothing boutique that sells men’s and women’s clothes, you do want to segment between men and women so you can send appropriate emails. But try and balance how granular your segments are with how much time you have to address them.
- Daily (or even weekly) marketing emails. I suspect a lot of small business owners are put off the idea of email marketing because 1) they hate getting spam emails all the time, and 2) they simply don’t have the time (or interest, since people universally hate putting emails together). But the reality is that marketing emails are one of the most cost-effective ways to generate sales and keep existing customers coming back. You absolutely should do it… but you don’t need to do it all the time. We have clients that do fine with emails just once a month, others do well with just two a month. In fact, many businesses find that sending too many emails results in poorer results and more unsubscribes.
Phew! Feel better? It’s far too easy to read the thousands of articles about marketing best practices and get stressed out because there’s no way you can do them all. But we’re here to tell you that some of them really just don’t make sense.
Of course, if you’re wondering how to decide what you actually should do, you can read our article on the top marketing strategies for small businesses or another of our articles on great steps to grow your business. And, of course, we’d love to help as well. We even offer free mini consultations, so you can pick our brains for free.
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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