Occasionally, we throw out a controversial statement. Partly to see if anyone notices, but mostly to see what people think. It’s time for another one, so here goes.
I’m not here to do your marketing!
My role with you is to ensure the right marketing happens and that it works. Let’s start with the Why and progress through to the How.
Why is this important?
Small businesses rarely have huge marketing budgets, if ever. That budget needs to be spent in a way that delivers the best ROI possible. That comes from having the right people doing the marketing.
In the very early stages, where money is really tight, the right person is usually the owner. They know their business inside out, but need help to work out what to say, where to say it, and when to say it. A little further down the line, when there is budget available it makes real sense to use experts. You wouldn’t want me building you a website (I’ve tried; its not pretty!) and its a long time since I’ve spent any real time working out the best way to do paid ads on Google etc. As I know, perhaps, two journalists, you don’t want me doing your PR. Get the point?
The great thing is that I know lots of experts in their fields. Here’s just a few:
- Dan Smale at The Client Factory – great at PPC
- Lorna & Matt at 3mil – wonderful website builders
- Chantal at Panpathic is a superb PR
These are just a few of the people that could become involved. They bring their expertise in their specialist field to bear on your marketing, but you only pay for what you use.
Working this way gives you the best balance of expertise and budget available to you, alongside the support and guidance I bring.
How I help: 4 recurring stages
To ensure the right marketing is being done for your small business, there are 4 stages that we rotate through.
1. Measure
Knowing what is and isn’t working is vital to deliver a great marketing ROI. Put simply, if it isn’t working, stop doing it. Spend the money and invest the time doing what you know is working or trying something different.
We analyse your marketing spend, marketing activity and results to see what is and isn’t working for you.
We have a Marketing ROI Calculator you can download here if you wish to start measuring your own marketing performance.
2. Focus
You cannot sell to everyone, and you don’t want to be saying you’ll sell to anyone. Every product or service has an Ideal Client. Someone that is looking for that and will make best use of it. Whilst there will always be people asking to buy that are way outside your Ideal Client description, you don’t market to them because they will be rare.
One of the easiest ways to work this out is to think about your best client…
We work with you to map out your Ideal Client, work out what to say to them and pull together that evidence set that will be key to proving you can deliver on your promises.
3. Plan
You have targets for your business. Your marketing plan, when implemented, needs to deliver the leads you need to hit your targets. It needs to utilise the available skills within your business (saving you some money), and it needs to work, ideally, within your marketing budget (more about that here).
We work with you to develop that plan. A plan that you buy into and commit to. If you don’t buy into it, it won’t work!
4. Deliver
Once the plan is in place, it must be done. My job is to use your marketing plan and ensure that everything is done when it is supposed to be, and that you know the results. You’ll see the leads coming in and we’ll talk about the conversion rates, as the leads turn to sales. If the leads aren’t converting, we’ll work with you to work out why as well.
If we see that some things aren’t working, we’ll look at them. Did they not work because:
- That marketing takes time, and it is too early to see
- It wasn’t done very well
- That it isn’t the right marketing for your business (we have to experiment sometimes)
We can then work with you to decide what to do next.
I hope this has explained what my role is and how SME Needs can help you. The important thing is that we can start helping you from just a few hours per month. As you grow and there is more marketing needed, we can do more – all the way up to the point in makes sense for you to recruit your own marketing director.
If you’d like to have a chat about this, call me on 020 8634 5911 or you can book something directly into my diary here.
