We help many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) improve their marketing efforts. All too often when we meet with a new client we recognize a number of common factors that are adversely affecting their marketing results.
For the benefit of our readers, we thought it would be helpful to outline the key issues we’ve seen over the years. This should enable you to assess if your own business is facing these same challenges, and what you may be able to do to resolve them.
We help many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) improve their marketing efforts. All too often when we meet with a new client we recognize a number of common factors that are adversely affecting their marketing results.
For the benefit of our readers, we thought it would be helpful to outline the key issues we’ve seen over the years. This should enable you to assess if your own business is facing these same challenges, and what you may be able to do to resolve them.
1. Absence of a marketing strategy
As we’ve stated in past blogs on several occasions, one critical shortcoming for many SMBs is the absence of a marketing strategy – the best roadmap to marketing success. Without a solid understanding of your brand, how to position it, its value proposition and target markets for example, how can you figure out what you should say to your audience and where you should say it? It’s almost impossible!
2. Marketing plan = Improved resource allocation
“When we fail to plan we plan to fail”. This infamous saying has real meaning on so many fronts, including for both business and marketing. Simply put, when businesses fail to spend the time to map out their marketing efforts (and corresponding budget) they put the business at a huge disadvantage. Allocate time for a marketing plan for no other reason than to better prioritize what you will be doing, where and for how much money.
3. The sticky effect
That other proverb that if you throw enough things against a wall eventually something will stick is another common failure we see with SMBs. Related to the two elements noted above, the absence of a coherent marketing strategy and plan causes many SMBs to do things will-nilly with little thought to the overall value and fit for the business. Force yourself to be selective and choose only those marketing elements that make sense for your brand and market.
4. Have an actual marketing budget
This would seem like an obvious one, especially in today’s hyper-competitive and cost-conscious climate. But many SMBs have no idea how to invest in their marketing. The key word here is invest. Today more than ever marketing has taken on a critical function as a way to improve business profitability and sustainability. Companies need to carefully plan how best to invest in their marketing and for what or risk failing miserably.
5. Failure to tap into experts when needed
There’s no doubt that most SMBs know their business and industry inside and out. However, because there is often limited in-house marketing expertise, they rely on the know-how of the owners or senior executives in the company. While this can be effective, frequently there are key areas where they will fall short due to limited marketing knowledge, which can lead to poor decisions.
SMBs need to be capable of identify their marketing limitations and proactively reach out to experts within and outside of the company to develop better campaigns and programs.
There you have it. We’d be interested to hear from you if there are other elements you feel we missed here. While our list is by no means complete, we hope it at least gives you a clear idea of the challenges SMBs often face from a marketing perspective.
If you’re an SMB and you feel you would benefit from some advice and guidance from marketing professionals, please feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to meet with you to outline how we might be able to help you.
