Small Business or Start Up Marketing Plans
We work with many small businesses and have had quite a few start up clients and just wanted to offer some marketing advice to people who may be in similar situations. There are many areas that we see come up, and we will cover those over time. This can help you get some insight on your marketing, and hopefully avoid these issues.
Our number one suggestion is that you need to do is figure out an annual or monthly marketing/advertising budget and goals and then stick to it. We suggest to approach this with the same intention as a personal savings plan, you are investing in your business and that amount needs to be large enough to do something with, but not so high that it is difficult for the business to set that money aside. If requested we can work with you on determining this budget. A few questions that we would ask are:
-What are you currently doing for marketing and advertising? (what’s working, what’s not, are you truly measuring or just estimating?)
-If you are doing B2B sales, what tools do you have in place to help with those sales?
-What are your business goals for the next year? 5 years?
-Who are a couple of your main competitors?
-Your website should be a central cog to all your marketing, we like pretty websites, but as a tool what is it truly doing for your business? (is it an over-glorified brochure? should it be selling products, should it be generating leads?)
Please feel free to contact Debbie or I to set up an appointment and discuss.