Do you agree that marketing for large companies is different from marketing for small businesses?
What numbers should be counted?
Basically, in business, they consider the ratio of invested funds to the number of sales, consider payback and income. These are really important figures for any business, more important than which may be the indicator that is responsible for the cost of one client. What does it mean? This means that in addition to the main indicators, you need to know how much it costs you to attract one client.
Since most of the money is made from repeat sales, the first sale can be made at a small profit or at cost. Highly profitable businesses often the first sale is made at a loss, often dumping, just to attract a client and make the first sale.
Every businessman should know the following indicators:
1. How much does it cost to attract one client.
2. How much money the client brings in all the time.
Having a good product or providing a quality service does not mean that they will sell themselves. You can improve the product or the quality of the service provided, but if your potential customers do not know about it, there will be no sales. The most important thing is to be able to reach out to your audience and offer the right product or service.
Low budget marketing is marketing tools attracting and retaining customers that involve minimal costs, and sometimes you can do without a budget at all.
Let's talk about some effective tools marketing, which do not need to spend a dime, and with which you can attract additional customers to your business.
10 low budget marketing tools:
1. Two step sales
That is, at the first stage, the company does not earn anything, and sometimes it can even work at a loss "buying a client."
2. Affiliate programs
To get a quick start in any business or quickly increase sales, you can use the customer bases of other companies that are related to your business or work in a related field. You can negotiate for a percentage of sales. True, in order for the offer to be attractive to your counterparties, you need to make them an offer that they cannot refuse.
3. Selling articles on thematic sites
If your company is engaged in the trade of goods or services, you can use PR in places where you can find your target audience. For example, if you sell garden tools, then forums and magazines for gardeners can become your thematic platforms.
You write an article about one product (group of products) or service and present it under the sauce of an educational article. The article may be titled "How a beginner gardener can save up to 50% on the purchase of equipment" and give advice on the use, cleaning, maintenance of garden equipment, briefly mention myself and my offer.
4. Up-sell, Cross-sell, Down-sell
It is easy to increase sales without additional investments by simply implementing Up-sell, Cross-sell and Down-sell techniques.
Up-sell is an offer to buy more or more. For example: The buyer chose summer tires for a car at a price of $500, you offered to pay another $100 and buy more expensive tires with a longer service life.
cross-sell- offering an additional related product. For example: We bought a shaving machine, and they offered you to buy more foam and lotion. Remember McDonald's: you bought a hamburger, and the cashier says "would you like a pie."
Down-sell- an offer to purchase a product that is cheaper, but highly profitable for you. For example, you can sell a TV for $700 that costs $500 to buy, or offer another TV for less than $500 that costs $100 to buy. In the second case, when selling goods cheaper, you will receive more income, since the margin is different.
Upselling technique allows you to increase the company's profit up to 30%, and sometimes more.
5. Product test drive for 30 days
Invite your customers to test your product. Depending on what you're selling, you may be able to offer a light version of the product for review. Remember the Kaspersky anti-virus program. The company offers for certain time use all the features of Kaspersky Lab antivirus for free, and then purchase a paid license.
This method allows a potential client, firstly, not to buy a "pig in a poke" and, secondly, in 30 days the client gets used to using this particular program and a large percentage of those who use the test drive will buy a license.
You can use the best channel to attract a client - recommendations. Ask your suppliers, partners, contractors to mention your company every time you communicate with customers. It will be better if you train your partners' managers in sales templates.
For suppliers, the benefit is that if you have more customers and more sales, then you will make more purchases. Two sides win.
For counterparties, simply offer a percentage of each client that comes on their recommendation, or simply ask if they know someone who would need your services. You will be surprised that many are willing to recommend you and for free, just because they liked working with you.
7. Defining a niche in the market
A narrower niche increases the level of sales. This is especially important for young companies. There is a saying: "If your product is for everyone, then your product is for no one." This means that the company must clearly define in which direction it will work and with which clients.
For example, for a beginner law firm the best start would be to specialize in one area of law. For example, corporate law or criminal.
The narrower the field of activity, the more your customers will come, and not just those who may be interested.
8. Marketing research, survey
If you are going to expand the product line or bring to market New Product, do not rush to do it just because your competitors do it. Conduct a survey of your potential clients and find out if they are interested in this product.
The best strategy, of course, is to develop a product for the audience, and not vice versa. That is, find your problem target audience and offers them a solution in the form of a product. After that, you create the product itself.
With services and resale, things are easier, with production it is more difficult, since you need to quickly create a certain amount of goods.
In any case, such a case is more justified than the production of large quantities of goods that no one wants to buy.
9. Unique Selling Proposition
This tool is one of the most important competition. Let's imagine 100 companies offering the same product at slightly different prices. Of course, the buyer will be guided by the purchase solely on the price, since there are simply no other criteria.
So the Palaroid company with its unique camera, which could immediately print a photo after shooting, was unique for the market. There were no analogues. Such a property this product allowed him to bypass all his competitors and achieve simply colossal sales. Moreover, its price was not small compared to other cameras.
Sometimes it may be that a product does not have a unique advantage, and it is no different from others. This situation is typical for inexpensive goods. daily demand: food, cosmetics, stationery, cleaning products. In this case, it is necessary to create a USP from ordinary characteristics or build it on emotions. Everything can be used: special packaging, unusual shape, color scheme, etc.
By the way, a unique selling proposition may not always relate to a product or service - it can be something in a company or service that is fundamentally different from competitors.
10. List of Benefits
"Customers do not buy drills, but holes in the wall" (c)
Every time you offer something to a client, you must understand why he needs it. Ideally, there should be lists of benefits for each of your products, which are well known to all the staff of the company and each employee could give an intelligible answer to the client's question what it will give me.
All these ways will help you attract new customers. True, working solely on attracting new customers, you will not achieve high results. And that's why, most of the customers will leave without buying anything. The sales funnel has not yet been canceled. And here you need to take care of effective techniques for converting potential customers into real ones.
Want to learn more about active sales and customer acquisition? Get two free mini-books: The Easy Way to Double Your Income and All the Secrets of Cold Selling. For those who work in sales, these practical guides move them very far forward.
IN modern world Incredible opportunities are opening up for private entrepreneurs that were previously out of the question. Every person who has accumulated start-up capital and has any idea in his head, can open his own business. However, unfortunately, a huge percentage of these start-ups called today go under pretty quickly, and the reasons for this can be very diverse. However, if you take a closer look, you will notice that the problem often lies in the complete absence of marketing activities.
Small business marketing is a must, but many entrepreneurs find they can do just fine without it. And this is where they make a fatal mistake, because marketing is the engine of any company. And if you have created your own small business, then this should be as relevant to you as possible. The marketing strategy is the first thing you need to think about. In this article, you'll learn why small business marketing is so important, and you'll also find a few practical advice about building your own marketing strategy that will allow your business not only to stay afloat, but also to constantly grow and expand.
Small business marketing
So, it's no secret to anyone that marketing is a field of activity that is responsible for the promotion of goods and services by all accessible ways. What is the difference between small business marketing and big business marketing? At first glance, it may seem that there is no difference, but you should not succumb to this apparent simplicity, because in fact there is a difference.
Marketing for small businesses has its own characteristics, such as constant changes in the market, losing and gaining new players every minute, incessant competition, that is, the impossibility of reaching the first place in its industry and creating a semblance of a monopoly, and much more.
You should understand that at first you will need constant advertising in order to survive in the harsh world of small businesses. Marketing in this case is not only your main key to connecting with customers, but also a vital necessity for both the growth of the company and its banal survival. As you can see, without marketing you will not be able to achieve good results, and it is likely that your company will join the dozens and hundreds of small businesses that are closing every day.
Strategic Approach
Now it's time to deal with the marketing strategy. Many entrepreneurs think of marketing as advertising their product, but it is much more than just advertising. Strategic marketing in small business plays a very important role and thanks to this article you will understand why. It’s worth starting with the fact that a young company that enters the market must set itself two goals: survival and profit. To achieve each of them, it is necessary to create a strategy that would allow us to achieve both goals as quickly, reliably and successfully as possible.
This is where strategic small business marketing comes into play. Using it, you can determine key points about your product, such as whether it has an advantage over other products that consumers want. Is your product unique or has it already been seen somewhere? Can your competitors replicate it? Accordingly, with the help of strategic marketing, you can find an effect that suits you, then translate this effect into an actual advantage, win people's attention with it, encourage them to make a choice in your favor, and then evaluate your marketing activities according to your strategy.
Creating a strategy
Even if you have 100 small business marketing ideas, they will have very little value on their own. That is why you first need to think about how to create a full-fledged marketing strategy, and then implement your advertising ideas within its framework. What does the creation of a marketing strategy in a small business environment look like?
First, you need to define your goal, or better yet, goals. How will it help you? Before starting a project, whether it's an entire business or a marketing campaign within an existing firm, you need to identify all the tasks that need to be completed in order for the project to be listed as a success. You can divide these goals into primary and secondary, but the essence remains the same. You will have specific points written down on paper or on a computer that your project will ultimately need to meet in order to be successful. This will allow you to more intelligently think through the strategy further in order to allocate resources as efficiently as possible to achieve your goals.
Second, you need to document your strategy. This means that you need to take your goals that you have just outlined and develop step by step instructions to achieve each of them. What you get will be your marketing strategy. And here it is already easy to understand what role competent marketing plays in promoting small businesses. The clearer the plan, the easier it will be to carry it out. You will be able to calculate in advance all the resources that you will need to achieve a particular goal, determine the intersection points that will allow you to more effectively move towards the achievement of goals, and much more.
Thirdly, you need to remember that there are two main tools for your strategy that should be key to your business throughout its existence. It's about about customers and product quality. This means that as part of your marketing strategy, you need to consider how you will attract customers, as well as how you can reallocate costs so that your marketing campaign is successful, but does not lead to a decrease in the quality of the manufactured products. The quality of the product and the quality of the marketing content is the most important thing that can be. You may lose customers, but you must not lose the quality of the product. Moreover, you can lose customers due to poor quality marketing content. In general, now you can understand how important these two tools are. And it's time to look at practical marketing tips and ideas that can benefit your business.
From the editor:
This is our favorite topic - what to do small business, how to put into practice the techniques that demonstrate the monsters of the industry? How to live and work in a small factory, a modest shop, a lonely kiosk by the road. Are the mechanics that colleagues at conferences describe so deliciously applicable to them?
(There is a short interview at the end of the article - with a rather unexpected ending).
In 2014 and 2015, we used to hear peremptory statements about the benefits of content marketing for everyone and everything. Sometimes we were even shown cases about how content marketing brought thousands of leads and a lot of money. The problem is that the majority success stories content marketing implementations are cases of agencies and consultants who earn their living from this very content marketing.
What about real business? Where is the proven benefit of content marketing for a producer of anything sane, not just marketing services? Is this benefit possible in principle?
Before we begin to deal with these issues, let's agree on the shore that our conversation will not be about consultants and agencies. When you see the phrase “small business” in an article, think of cinder blocks. For clarity, let's add the main character to the article - Vasily Petrovich, the owner small business for the production of cinder blocks "Romashka".
Picture for those who have not seen cinder blocks. Or did not know that these are cinder blocks.
This will help us all focus on real problems, and not philosophize about the next ways to make an info business out of nothing with just blogging and mailing.
Matches are not toys for children.
Why those who think that content marketing is useless for small businesses are right
When Vasily Petrovich is imbued with a desire to promote his business with the help of content marketing, he faces a difficult choice: buy services from agencies or do everything on his own. Now, together with Vasily Petrovich, we will see why any choice will not be in his favor.
Problem 1.
When you go to buy content marketing, it's hard to buy it
If it seems to you that now every third agency provides services related to content marketing, and buying them is easy, then you are greatly mistaken. This is what they will offer Vasily Petrovich in 99% of cases.
- SMM. Under the guise of content marketing, yesterday's SMM agencies offer businesses to run communities. Content marketing from their point of view is a content plan for a community or a group and short texts with branded pictures. The area of responsibility of such agencies now begins with the “people join your community” stage. Where they come from, why they enter, what to do with them next - nobody cares. The fact that social networks are only one channel for distributing content, and that there are others, Vasily Petrovich will not be told here.
Oh, who is this?
- SEO. Under the guise of content marketing, mutated SEO agencies offer all the same articles pumped with keywords, but in thematic series. Everyone is modestly silent about the fact that content is a tactic, and that you need to think about the channels for its distribution, about the connection with business tasks. Only a few of these agencies are developing towards search marketing, and it will be very difficult for an inexperienced Vasily Petrovich to find them among the crowd of mutants.
- Copywriting. Here, under the guise of content marketing, they will no longer sell individual selling articles, but blogging or mailing lists. Vasily Petrovich does not realize that content is not only texts, and that even his loving grandmother will not voluntarily read a blog about cinder blocks. But there is no choice!
What happens if a small business representative makes a choice in favor of any of these solutions? Nothing good - everything that you paid for yesterday, and that has already stopped working, you will receive today, but more expensive.
Problem 2
Content Marketing Is Too Expensive
But what happens if Vasily Petrovich decides to do content marketing on his own.
- Plan A: All good things come at a price
If Vasily Petrovich has a budget, he can hire full-time specialists. He will need someone who can develop a strategy and implement it. The cost of an Internet marketer with experience in content marketing can easily exceed the monthly income of Vasily Petrovich himself. Of course, you can save money and hire a newbie, but the effect of the work of such an employee will be negligible for a long time.
- Plan B: you can pay with other resources
Content marketing can be budget-free. Small business owners have a very valuable thing - expertise. Therefore, they are quite capable of working according to a ready-made strategy without the help of agencies. There is only one "but" - it takes time. Content marketing cannot be done on a case-by-case basis and cannot be reduced to filling external and internal sites with content. It's complicated daily work over the transformation of meanings into a useful experience for the audience. There is a great risk that Vasily Petrovich simply will not have time to manage the Romashka plant.
Whatever one may say, so far we see that there is almost no chance for small businesses to get at least some benefit from content marketing. But this is just one view of the problem. There is another.
Why those who believe that content marketing is necessary for small businesses are right
The answer is simple: it is the only sustainable platform on which business promotion can be built. It is especially important to have such a platform small companies, who can not afford the race budgets in contextual advertising.
Firstly, as already mentioned, the owners and their employees have the necessary expertise. This is a deep knowledge of your product and industry, which is very different from the emasculated Wikipedia articles. This is a unique experience that is not always obvious to the audience. This is an opportunity to really help your clients.
Secondly, It is small businesses that can afford such experiments. Large companies lose their flexibility, it is difficult for them to even just try a new approach to promotion - it takes time to agree, time to implement, time to discuss each step. While large companies are just beginning to coordinate actions, small businesses at this time are already skimming the cream, and without significant investments. Look at the work of subwoofer manufacturers Pride on VK, on the approach of Mosigra or Alexey Zemskov. Yes, each of them has flaws, each can be faulted in terms of content marketing. But they do what remains impossible for many large companies: engage and, more importantly, engage their audience in a long-term dialogue that has made their business successful. And the main thing in their success is not money, but a deep meaning and real benefits that are obvious to every client.
Third, Now there is no other way to attract and retain an audience other than through useful content. Advertising will not force your customers to stay with you, will not make them more loyal, will not affect the decision when the demand has not yet been formed.
Who is right in the end
The one who sees both the risks and opportunities for small businesses in promoting through content marketing is right.
Here is what set you should have if you want to achieve the result:
- Your product should be selected some time prior to purchase. If it is bought spontaneously, content marketing will not help you.
- You must be a bearer of meaning and a source of expertise. If you only copy other people's solutions and ideas, you can make money on it, but it will be more useful for you to advance through advertising and SEO. Content marketing does not allow you to imitate value, so the essence of the business will quickly come to the surface.
- You must have sufficient resources. This is either money or time, knowledge and experience, but without them nothing will work.
If you think you have something to talk about with your audience, and if your product is capable of changing people's lives for the better, then the second part of this guide will help you get started and get results.
To the madness of the brave we sing a song.
Action plan for owners and managers of small companies
Let's bring Vasily Petrovich and his cinder block plant "Romashka" back into the game. We will build a strategy for content marketing promotion on his example.
1. Set goals
Small businesses should leave behind the scenes all the image activities that are typical of giants. You need specific business goals so that promotion is not an interesting hobby or a sunk expense.
Suppose that our Vasily Petrovich needs to increase sales. He is unoriginal.
The catch is that content marketing excludes direct advertising. With the help of content marketing, we will work to get more incoming requests and applications, and specially trained managers will ultimately fight for sales.
2. Decide on the target audience
Who buys cinder blocks? Who doesn't buy them! People build houses and cottages, construction companies cinder blocks are used. The problem is that no one will consume content about such a product.
What's new can be said about the cinder block? How it is produced is of no interest to anyone. Everyone or almost everyone knows how to use it. And even if you target an audience with unformed demand, it will quickly become clear that the topics for proper quality content are over in a month or two. So, what is next?
Vasily Petrovich needs an audience that will bring money, and which he has something to say for a long time. Therefore, we abandoned the obvious solutions and aimed at dealers: those who buy cinder block in bulk from manufacturers for resale.
3. Find out what your target audience really wants
In the case of Vasily Petrovich, the needs of the target audience are obvious. Dealers want to know how to make more money by reselling cinder block. This and only this really excites the target audience.
In other cases, the needs will be different. There are many ways to find out the preferences of potential customers: you can analyze search terms, you can turn websites, forums, social networks inside out and get real questions from real people. Lots of information on this subject. It is only important not to choose what is easier for you. Only the acute and relevant information needs of your target audience matter. And if they care about money, do not give them the properties of cinder blocks - it will not work.
4. Consider how your audience would be comfortable consuming content
When it comes to content marketing, copy is the first thing that comes to mind. But in addition to texts, there are also videos, audio, presentations, illustrations, short messages, games. What in your case will be more familiar to your potential customers, and what will help to better reveal the essence of your business?
Vasily Petrovich will teach dealers how they can increase their income by selling cinder blocks. He will provide some of the information in text form, but sometimes he will hold webinars, and it is better to present statistics in the form of infographics. He also needs presentations.
If Vasily Petrovich is the owner of not a factory, but a cosmetology clinic, he cannot do without photographs. And if he is the owner of an atelier, the video will become the main content, because many of the secrets of sewing and cutting are easier to show than to explain in words. Think about what will be optimal in your case.
5. Choose the best content distribution channels
For simplicity, we divide the channels into external and internal.
External content distribution channels that Vasily Petrovich will use are partners and their platforms. Partners will be everyone with whom the target audience of Vasily Petrovich coincides, who has developed sites on the network, the need for quality content, and with whom he does not compete.
It can be:
- clubs and business support centers;
- sellers of equipment for the production of cinder blocks;
- manufacturers of equipment for the production of cinder blocks;
- banks serving small businesses;
- transport companies;
- + specialized printed and electronic editions for owners and managers construction business and so;
- ... and so on, a million options.
Internal channels that Vasily Petrovich can use:
- blog on the site;
- email newsletter;
- groups in social networks (FB and VK);
- YouTube channel;
- channel on Slideshare.
When choosing content distribution channels, it is important to think not in stereotypes like those that tell us that Vkontakte is social network for schoolchildren. It is important to simply be where your target audience is.
6. Write down chains of targeted actions
Everything before that was just preparation for content marketing. It starts from this very moment - from the moment of planning the movement of the target audience from the first contact with you to the goal. Without predetermined chains of targeted actions, Vasily Petrovich will not be able to control the behavior of visitors on his resources and will publish useful information at random.
As we remember, our main goal is to increase sales. And an achievable goal is an increase in incoming applications and requests. We are working on an achievable goal, because sales in the end is the responsibility of managers. If the manager can't connect the two words, all of our great content marketing will fall apart on this obstacle. But we believe that Vasily Petrovich's managers are professional and that everything will be fine.
As an example, let's take such a simple chain of targeted actions, which can be one of dozens of simultaneously launched chains in Vasily Petrovich's strategy.
7. Make a content plan
Once you have decided for whom, where, why you will distribute content, it's time to decide on the topics. Here is the simplest yet very effective content plan template that includes all the important details about each type of post. Be sure to include dates and responsible persons in your plan.
In order for content plans to make sense and work, create them for the period that each chain of targeted actions lasts. Someone will need a content plan for a couple of weeks, and someone for six months ahead - there are no universal solutions.
8. Measure!
In order for Vasily Petrovich to understand how effective his promotion is, he will track key indicators every week. In his case, these indicators will be targeted actions.
Of course, views are also important, and their depth, and time spent on the site. But for business priority key indicators efficiency will be the number of subscribers to the newsletter, the number of registrations for the webinar and the number of incoming applications. The rest of the indicators are secondary. This means that Vasily Petrovich will not fight for the number of "likes" in social networks. And he will be right.
Results
Of course, within the framework of one article, it is impossible to cover the entire topic of content marketing for small businesses, just as it is impossible to demonstrate a complete content strategy (the content-book that we give out to clients contains, on average, 70-100 pages of small text and graphics), but, in general, the picture is clear.
Getting a small business to start a meaningful and impactful promotion with useful content is easy. But only the best will get the result: those who do not imitate the benefits, those who have the resources, those who move consistently, and those who do not stop.
Do you want the main secret of content marketing in the end? Just keep going when others give up. This is enough for success, if, of course, you started with a competent content strategy, and not with intuitive decisions.
Interview following the article
Kotoreditor:
I read the text with growing interest - what will you offer the Romashka plant.
But it seemed to me that the proposal was ambiguous. He is the owner of the production, how will he teach someone to sell, this time.
And: stories about sales will last for a couple of months - that's two.
Sales, promotion, development are inexhaustible topics, in general. And owners are usually aware of the details, especially in small businesses. The main thing here is the author's view and approach, and not the canonical retelling of books. Take the same "Power of the Mind" and Fyodor Ovchinnikov - he just writes about it all, but the topics do not end there. And they are unlikely to run out as the company continues to grow.
Well, when business development ends, then what kind of content marketing.
Kotoreditor:
It's clear. But this is not the "Power of the Mind", but an ordinary factory that stamps cinder blocks.
So, it's not really important. If the owner has useful experience, expertise, his own vision, then he has something to say. Well, or from his specialists. Or both he and his specialists) Another question is that usually there is nothing like that. But then again - what kind of content marketing is there)
Usually at the audit stage it is clear whether the client has / does not have resources for all this fuss. And if not, then contextual advertising and this will all be much more useful than KM and imitation of benefits.
The editorial board does not agree with some theses, but the material is really valuable, do you agree?
sp-force-hide ( display: none;).sp-form ( display: block; background: rgba(247, 247, 247, 1); padding: 25px; width: 800px; max-width: 100%; border- radius: 0px; -moz-border-radius: 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 0px; border-color: #dddddd; border-style: solid; border-width: 13px; font-family: Arial, "Helvetica Neue ", sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center; background-size: auto;).sp-form input ( display: inline-block; opacity: 1; visibility: visible;).sp -form .sp-form-fields-wrapper ( margin: 0 auto; width: 750px;).sp-form .sp-form-control ( background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1); border-color: rgba (217, 217, 217, 1); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; font-size: 15px; padding-left: 8.75px; padding-right: 8.75px; border-radius: 0px; -moz -border-radius: 0px; -webkit-border-radius: 0px; height: 35px; width: 100%;).sp-form .sp-field label ( color: #444444; font-size: 14px; font-style : normal; font-weight: bold;).sp-form .sp-button ( border-radius: 25px; -moz-border-radius: 25px; -webkit-border-radius: 25px; background-color: #ef002b; color: #ffffff; width: 100% font-weight: 700 font-style: normal font-family: Arial, sans-serif; box-shadow: none -moz-box-shadow: none; -webkit-box-shadow: none;).sp-form .sp-button-container ( text-align: center; width: auto;)
