Small Business Marketing Ideas Podcast
Small Business Marketing Ideas Podcast Tired of discounting your products and services to get a sale? There’s more to marketing then discounting. Tune in now to the Small Business Marketing Ideas Podcast with The Joy of Marketing to learn how to build your business with creative marketing ideas. Hosts Sarah Petty and Erin Verbeck are MBA’s, former ad agency marketing directors and successful small business owners. They look at marketing well, a bit differently. Turn up your speakers and get ready for some marketing caffeine to perk up your business. Sarah: Hi guys, its Sarah… Erin: … and Erin… Sarah: …with The Joy of Marketing. We’re so excited to be back with another marketing idea made simple for you. Erin: Today, we’re going to share the top three mistakes we see business owners making in their marketing and branding. We see it all the time, so tune in. We are going to share with you what they are and how you can overcome these mistakes if you’re one of the offenders. Sarah: We get it. It is hard being a small business owner. You have to wear all the hats. You don’t get to hire out necessarily a bookkeeper or a receptionist, a salesperson, a strategist, a buyer, a graphic designer, a copywriter or a photographer if you’re not one and the marketing hat is probably your least favorite. Erin: www.TheJoyofMarketing.com 1 Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
So, we’re going to jump into these three common mistakes that we see some of you making and we’re going to teach you how to avoid making them. The first one that we see is: ♦ Small business owners using several different logos and identities Sarah: When Erin and I worked at the advertising agency together that’s what we would start with our clients. They would come in and the first thing we would do is we would lay out all of their identity pieces. We would look at them and look for inconsistencies. It’s amazing how even some of the largest companies in our market were using several different versions of their logo. They were one day picking a new font and deciding that would be their logo. Or, they had a graphic designer on staff for a while who played with the logo and then they went back to the old logo and colors changed and things like that. That is how there’s disconnect with the consumer. Consumers need to recognize you. They need to understand that you’re consistent and you’re the same person every day. It’s just like your personal identity is your face. That’s the same with your business identity. You don’t want it to change so people know who you are. So, let’s talk about how to get consistency within your logo and your identity so that you can move on to promoting and building your business. If you do not have a consistent logo and identity the best promotion in the world can’t help you because you’re creating conflict and causing confusion among the consumer. 1. Get one great version of your logo and put it on your desktop Does that mean hiring a professional designer? I would say yes. Erin? Erin: I would completely agree. You know we talk so much about this and those of you who follow us regularly at The Joy of Marketing have heard us say a million times -‐-‐ your logo is your face. It’s how people identify with you. If you had a big date you wouldn’t do your hair all the way, not brush it or do half your hair, but not do it the other way. If it was a big date or an important event you would www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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want to make sure that you put your best foot forward. This is your face. This is how people recognize you. You need to make sure it’s professional. Again, if you are trying to charge a premium for your products and services then you need to set the tone immediately when someone has that first impression of you that this is a place where they should invest. If it’s a hand-‐drawn, donkey looking logo that your brother’s cousin did for you, it’s obvious and people are going to question why they should be investing more with you when they can tell you’re not investing in your business yourself. Sarah: 2. Work with a professional graphic designer We discovered that one again because it’s like your personal identity as a good example. You buy the expensive blue jeans. You invest in how you look. You get the fancy expensive shoes, boots, all of those kinds of things to present your personal identity in a better light. So, a professional graphic designer is so important for building your logo and your identity. Try it if you have to. 3. Trade for those professional services if you can We talk a lot about that too with all the hats you wear. Anything you can trade for is fabulous, so if you can trade with a graphic designer, a photographer, a copywriter; shoot if you’re having an office party and one of your clients owns a restaurant see if you can trade for the catering. All of those things add up. Lastly, 4. Create a graphic standards worksheet These are the standards that your business lives by and you don’t veer from that. So, you have your logo, your PMS colors and your fonts. We recommend that you print this out or have your graphic designer do it and print it out for you. Put it on the bulletin board so that when you’re tempted to use a trendy font to set your logo type in or something crazy you’ve never done for your address line that’s illegible or whatever, you’re reminded of who you are and what’s important to you. Erin: www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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It’s tough when you are a small business owner and you’re doing everything yourself. You may rely on this graphic designer to do this for you and then you may have an ad due to this publication and so you just have them lay it out for you. What happens is you start to look at all your different marketing pieces and all the different faces that you’re wearing and presenting to a customer and they’re not consistent. So that graphic standards manual will help you stay focused. You can even talk about what tone you’re going to use in your marketing materials. If you want to write in first person or third person, if you want to write as if you are a new mother or if you want to write as if you’re a grandmother. Think about that tone that comes through in all of your marketing materials as well. That’s something that should be a part of your graphic standards and something that you should be keeping in mind in terms of how you can keep your marketing pieces consistent. The second most common mistake we see people making is: • Devaluing their products and services by discounting If you don’t have a promotional plan then you’re going to fall victim to this. I’ve seen it time and time again, haven’t you Sarah? Sarah: Absolutely! It makes me so sad. Erin: You know that knee-‐jerk reaction of my phone is not ringing. Clients aren’t coming in the door. I haven’t had a sale on my website. I need to have a sale. That will get people in. That will get people excited. The way you can avoid doing this or the way that you can avoid devaluing your products and services is to have a plan. It’s your roadmap to success. So, look at how much money you need to make in the next three months, six months, year, to meet your goals. Break it down into teeny tiny pieces. How many sales do you need a day, a week, a month, to achieve your revenue goals? It’s hard when you see that big number. If you see that number of I need half a million in revenue this year to meet my goals. It’s really hard if you don’t break that down into tiny pieces. So, break them down. Let yourself see just how many sales you need each day, each week, each month, to meet those goals. www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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Then from there you want to tie your marketing efforts into special times of the year. So, keep in mind holidays and what you’re going to do promotionally. Maybe you’re going to do free gift wrapping during Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day that will help you drive traffic to your business. What can you do that’s value added that you can use to get people in the door without having to discount and devalue your products and services. Finally, look at opportunities to co-‐market. Find other local business owners who reach your same target audience. Shop there, start to make friend with them, build a relationship. Help each other grow your businesses and grow your lists so that you can both benefit from helping each other out. There are tons of opportunities there for you to work with other like businesses. If you have a retail location or a service business, shop locally. Don’t shop the chain stores. Build relationships so that you can help your community and help the other local business owners. If you’re an online business find other businesses who don’t necessarily compete with you but who maybe offer a complimentary service or product to what you do. Reach the same target audience and see how you can co-‐ market together to offer something of even more value to both of your existing clients. Sarah: The bottom line is it’s not being reactive it’s being proactive. You know that your business is typically slow maybe in February-‐March, so what are you doing so that next February and March you have something going on? Waiting until then and then having a quick fire sale is not the answer, so by planning and staying ahead of the game it helps you hold your prices so that you don’t have to devalue and panic and discount. The third common mistake we see small business owners make is: • Monkey see, monkey do Even back in our ad agency days, my gosh, we’d have companies coming in saying I know we just finished our annual plan and we went through this whole process, but my competitor just did a billboard down the street. Should we be doing a billboard? Don’t you remember those days, Erin? www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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Erin: Oh, my goodness, yes, yes, yes. Sarah: We would say you know what? It’s not that billboards are wrong for you, but we’ve already come up with a strategy and a plan for the year. You have to let it run and we’ll consider that next year. I remember in this particular situation a month or two or a couple of weeks later I was at a networking event and I ran into the owner of the billboard company. I said hey, I like your new billboard that you have down on such and such street. He said yeah. His niece just started working at our billboard company and that was her first sale – to her uncle. So, there was no strategy there. There was no brilliant ah-‐ha moment or anything. It was simply his niece went to work there and she needed to sell a billboard to someone. Erin: Yeah, it’s so true. I think that we get caught up in the trap of oh, my gosh, from the outside this competitor looks like they have all the clients that I want and on the inside you have no idea what their numbers look like. You have no idea if they’re making a go of it and you have no idea what the strategy is behind their business decisions and marketing decisions. This is such a trap that you can fall in and you really need to avoid this whole monkey see, monkey do thing. It’s just not healthy for your business. Sarah: Gosh, over the year too we’ve known so many business owners in our market that don’t even care if they’re making a profit. It just gives them somewhere to go all day. Erin: Yes, very true. Sarah: Yes, so let’s talk about some things that you can do to avoid having to feel like you need to pay attention to what the competition is doing. They’re priced this way and they’re doing these things and making these decisions. www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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1. Understand what makes you different. What is your competitive advantage?
It should not be that you are cheaper because that’s not sustainable. We always talk about sustainable competitive advantage. There’s always a Wal-‐Mart. There’s always someone that doesn’t care if they make a profit that’s down the road, so you have to do something better: Better service Better products Better selection Better location There are so many things that you I’m sure are doing different. You’re an expert at what you do. You’re better. You know that, but you need to understand what those things are. Erin: Then you also need to understand what makes your clients that are your best clients loyal to you and not the competition and I think we take this for granted. You know we take their money. We get the sale. We know we’re going to see them every week, but we don’t really stop and think about why it is that they come to us. We may think oh, it’s just because we’re right around the corner from their house. It’s our location, but in reality it may be your product selection. It may be that your vegetables and fruits are so much better than your competition. Or, it may be something else. It may be because of your exquisite attention to detail or it may be because they just like that your clerks speak to them every time they come in and know who they are and call them by their first name. You need to take some time to figure out what it is that makes your clients loyal to you and then take that factor and make sure that you are using it as a point of differentiation in all of your marketing materials. Make sure that is something you are touting in your public relations efforts, in your marketing materials. Make sure that it’s well communicated that this is a clear differentiation between you and your competitors. Sarah: Absolutely, I agree with you 100%. Sometimes you have more than one thing that makes you different. You can’t just say oh, I have better fruit. Maybe it’s where you get your fruit, how you handle your fruit, everybody that serves the fruit and all the www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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different things along the line. Maybe you’ve invested in the most expensive fruit cutting equipment and all those types of things, all of those things add up. Erin: I think the key here is to take off your blinders. You know we’re so close to our business and we think well, of course the reason why they come here is because our fruit is handpicked and we get them from local growers, but that might not be it. So, you really need to get those blinders off and get out there and talk to your best clients and find out what it is that they love about you. Get them talking that’s really going to help. Sarah: Yes and when I talk to a lot of small business owners I’ll ask them and you can tell. The more savvy business owners can immediately tell me in one sentence what makes them different – why it’s worth paying more. So, have that on the tip of your tongue and be ready to share with people what makes you different. To recap these three common mistakes: 1. Get one great professionally-‐designed logo and have it accessible so that you can use it everywhere. 2. Avoid devaluing your products and services with discounting by creating an amazing promotional plan so that you’re being proactive instead of reactive so you don’t wake up one day without business, panic and have a sale. 3. Focus on what you do that makes you different instead of worrying about what your competitors are doing and trying to copy them and trying to be who they are. Look at your passion and skill and what makes you better and make that the focus of all of your marketing and promotional communications. Erin: So, if you want more marketing ideas for your small business make sure you subscribe to our podcast right here in iTunes. We have a few new episodes every month filled with marketing ideas to help make marketing simple for you. We know you have a lot on your plate and so our goal here with our podcast is to give you some great ideas that you can incorporate into your business and get more sales. Also, if you want to check out our website we’re at www.TheJoyofMarketing.com where we have tons of free resources for you including our free eBook The Boutique Experience where we teach you the five essential ingredients that you need to have a www.TheJoyofMarketing.com Copyright, The Joy of Marketing. All Rights Reserved.
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boutique business model and not focus on price. So, check that out at www.TheJoyofMarketing.com and we will talk to you soon. Thanks. Sarah: Thanks you. Can’t get enough marketing ideas? Check out The Joy of Marketing’s free resources at www.TheJoyofMarketing.com/free for more marketing ideas made simple every day, and be sure to subscribe to this podcast if you want to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
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