Small Business Marketing

The Essentials of Shoestring Marketing

One of the most difficult things to get right when starting a new business is knowing how to market your new venture.

Unfortunately it's an area often overlooked. Efforts can vary from large and expensive magazine advertisements to doing absolutely nothing at all. Often both approaches bring the same result. Nothing happens.

Why is marketing so important?

Having a successful marketing strategy for your business is like having a powerful train driving customers through your doors. Once these customers are through your doors, you can then work on selling them your goods and services. All too often businesses concentrate their efforts on the sales function without really bothering about marketing, which results in poor sales because customers aren't coming to buy.

Why advertising doesn't work

Small businesses waste thousands of pounds annually on expensive advertising that will never bring them a single customer. Unfortunately many labour under the misconception that all they have to do to bring business through their doors is go with the biggest ad they can afford. Advertising doesn't work this way.

The advertisement's objective must be:

•  Specific . How many new customers do you want to generate? How many products do you want to sell?

•  Measurable . How are you going to work out how successful your ad is? One way is to ask to customers replying to your ad to quote a specific reference number or mention the ad itself to take advantage of a special offer.

•  Targeted . You must make sure your ad is going to reach your potential market. If you're a hairdresser offering a mobile hairdressing service, you need to target those people who for whatever reasons find themselves mostly housebound.

Ten ways to market your business with a small budget

1. Classified advertisements.

2. Press releases.

3. Sponsorship.

4. Media stunts.

5. Make more use of your business cards.

6. Join a local networking group.

7. Use self-employed sales agents.

8. Leaflet drops.

9. Give talks to other businesses.

10. Write for your favourite hobby magazines or create your own newsletter.

Classified advertisements

You may wonder why after berating advertisements I'm now including them in my list. My reasons are simply that some businesses will have to employ traditional advertising methods to get started and bring potential customers through their doors.

Small, and relatively inexpensive classified ads, can be an excellent, cheap way of achieving sales targets.

Summary

Effective marketing needn't be expensive. A good website supported by a relatively inexpensive, but carefully constructed, classified ad can be far more effective than a large and expensive glossy ad. The most important thing to get right with your marketing is to begin with a budget.

Work out a figure that covers you for a series of small classified advertisements, website promotion, leaflets, business cards and any other point-of-sale material your business will require and then stick rigidly to your budget.

The most important thing to remember about advertising is that the amount of money you spend on your marketing will not guarantee you a pro-rata amount of business.

*Tip*
Lots of successful businesses are marketing on a shoestring. I know because ours is one of them.
*

So don't be afraid to go out and look for free publicity, hand out leaflets, put posters up, give talks to groups, and build your own website. Above all, take responsibility for the future of your own business and not do as many do - allow it to fall or succeed on the amount of advertising they have paid for.

1. Spending money on an advertisement will not automatically generate more business.

2. For an advertisement to work it must have a clear objective, which isn't necessarily to sell your goods.

3. A marketing campaign is one half of your sales function and is equally as important as your sales function.

4. Classified advertisements can be a great way of marketing your business.

5. Advertisements take time to work. A single ad is unlikely to give any worthwhile return.

6. Work out a marketing budget and stick to it.

7. Never buy advertisements from cold-calling telesales executives.

8. Make sure your advertisement is somewhere your target customer is visiting.