If you’re a small business owner, you owe it to yourself to stretch every cent you set aside for marketing and advertising. After all, you can’t grow into a bigger business if you don’t boost your overall profits and market reach, which you depend on your customers to help you do. Knowing how to make the most of your marketing budget can be the first step to successfully reaching your business potential.
Know the Target You’re Aiming For
The first thing you want to do is think like a major marketing and development officer like Chipotle’s Mark Crumpacker. The restaurant chain hasn’t become as successful as it has by taking a scattershot approach to advertising and marketing. Decide on your specific goal for marketing. Do you want to promote a new service or product? Or have you decided to turn your advertising efforts to social media platforms? Whatever the goal, keep it in the forefront of your mind as you lay out and tweak your marketing strategy.
Understand Current and Upcoming Trends
Print advertising still exists, but it most certainly isn’t trending. Investing your money in outdated marketing strategies is a surefire way to waste your time and money. Before spending, do some research to see what marketing trends have taken over your specific industry. Keep your finger on the pulse of your business sector to see which trends are on the horizon and poised to become popular in the future. This way, you aren’t blowing your marketing budget playing catch up while you could be investing your bucks on something more worthwhile.
Don’t Forget About Content Marketing
Rather than constant and outright advertising, you should also focus on educating your customers and target audience. For instance, if your small business sells car parts, you can write an article on how readers can properly maintain their cars in the winter and summer seasons. Share articles and insights from industry leaders that your target audience may find interesting, making sure you look for a way to tie the information back to your company. You can also share exciting news or changes taking place within your small business to keep customers in the loop so they feel more connected to your brand.
Keep Track of Your ROI
Once you’ve decided on a marketing plan, be sure that you keep a close eye on its results so that you know what kind of return on investment you’re experiencing. It won’t do you much good to think you’ve got a great strategy only to later learn you’ve been losing money for months and could have stopped the financial hemorrhaging had you just kept a close watch on your results. While you want to give your plans enough time to get up and running, you also need to know when it’s time to try something different.
Know Which Mode You’re In
Your marketing plans are also influenced by whether your small company is in growth mode or planning mode. If it’s planning mode that you’re in, strategizing for the long-term will likely be the most effective way to proceed so that you have a better chance of growing slowly over time with inbound content. On the other hand, if you’re in growth mode, fast results is your goal, which means making sure your commercial site is one of your main marketing junctures.
Utilize Public Relations
Rather than doing all the heavy lifting on your own, consider recruiting the help of the local media to help spread the word about your small business. If you feel that your specific type of company would be of interest to the public, especially your local community, or if you have an intriguing story about how your organization got started, see if local reporters or bloggers would be interested in interviewing you.
Your small business marketing budget can have huge potential if you play your cards right. With these tips, your dollars and potential can stretch further than you think.
