Hi Everyone,
This week’s newsletter is in response to a question we received about last week’s article about marketing:
Matthew asks, “I recognise that I probably should be doing more marketing for my business. But, I run a small practice pretty much by myself. I don’t have the time or resources to really do all that much. Do you have any thoughts on any easy ways to market my business that won’t break the bank?”
That’s actually a very good question. After all, everyone knows that you need to market and promote a business for it to succeed. But when money gets tight, it is very tempting to hold back on marketing, because it can very easily become a big burden on the bottom line.
However, a lack of resources shouldn’t be seen as a deterrent to effectively marketing your business. Even if marketing is not your forte, there are some simple and effective tips and tools that you can use that will help you do some effective marketing on an affordable budget:
1. Know Thy Client
It sounds pretty commonsense, but knowing exactly who you are marketing to is critical if you want to have any chance of marketing effectively to anyone. This doesn’t mean you need to know exactly that it’s Joe Bloggs of 123 ABC St, but it does mean having more specifics than just “Accumulators” or “Couples with children”.
There are two main reasons for wanting to be as precise about your audience as possible:
- Broad definitions usually result in large sample sizes, and the larger the number, the more expensive it will be for you to market to; and
- The broader the market the harder it will be for you to hook into specific needs and grab people’s attention, lowering the effectiveness of your marketing.
2. Set the Objective
What are you hoping to achieve from your campaign? Are you marketing to get new leads? New sales? To build up your brand and presence? To grow customer loyalty?
Remember that different objectives will require different messages and/or forms of communication. Knowing what you actually want to achieve with your marketing is essential if you want to make sure that your valuable marketing dollars are spent in the right areas.
3. Outsource the Development
One of the biggest developments in the last 5-10 years for small businesses is the proliferation of the online freelancing / outsourcing market. Through sites like oDesk and Freelancer*, any business can easily access professional resources from around the world for a fraction of the price.
This means that, if you are not too experienced in writing sales copy, or just don’t have the time to do it yourself, that’s OK. Pop onto one of these sites, and in a few minutes you can have your requirements up with contractors around the world bidding for your work.
It might seem a bit disloyal to local suppliers, but consider that a regular marketing agency could easily charge $1,000+ to write a sales letter for you. Through these freelancers, you might be able to get the same done for $100.
Of course, it’s not a total panacea. To get the most out of such services, you need to be specific with your requirements. And expect to have to fine-tune the deliverables afterwards. But if your main deterrent is a lack of time and / or resources, these services can be a very quick and cost-effective way to get your marketing material developed. Best of all, some of these freelancers specialise in certain areas (e.g. email marketing), which means you can also tap into their expertise.
* – We have no affiliation with these services. They are only mentioned for illustration purposes.
4. Finding the Right Channels
By this point, you probably have a list of 500-1,000 contacts, with marketing copy ready to go. But what channel(s) should you use?
The good thing about being more specific in defining your client set and reducing the set down to a manageable 500-1,000 is that, from a cost perspective, it’s unlikely to break the bank either way. An email campaign on 1,000 will cost roughly around $100. A direct mail campaign will probably set you back approx. $800. These should be pretty reasonable amounts for most small businesses.
This, therefore, gives you the flexibility to look at it from the perspective of which channel will be most effective for your target audience. You could even do both just to make sure you get the maximum coverage. Just look at what level of responses you expect, and double-check that the ROI is there.
After that, it’s just a matter of testing, refining, and delivering your marketing campaign. But by following some of the techniques mentioned above, you can keep your costs down, while still delivering an effective campaign for your business.
Until next week,
Lap-Tin
