It’s important to set aside time to plan your marketing strategy for the year ahead. How will you continue to maintain and grow your business? What plans do you have to keep your business on track and stay ahead of the competition?
Issues related to marketing are top-of-mind for small business owners. In fact, according to Yodle‘s recently released First Annual Small Business Sentiment Survey, 42% of small business owners said they are worried about finding new customers, making it their #1 overall concern. Additionally, 33% of small business owners surveyed said that keeping their current customers is a concern (#3 overall), while 21% of owners cited their competition as something they worry about (#6 overall).
Source: Yodle’s First Annual Small Business Sentiment Survey, Aug. 2013
As we can all attest, last year was a year in which consumers increasingly adopted new technology, search and review tools and social media channels to help drive their path to purchase. This was also a year in which a variety of new marketing tools were introduced to make it easier for small businesses to reach and convert consumers in the places where they are increasingly searching.
Yet, despite small business owners’ concerns about effectively marketing their businesses, many are not making the necessary investments to adapt to todays fast-paced and changing environment. While the consequences of inaction may seem small now, they will only become greater in the future, threatening the stability and growth of small business owners’ operations.
As you plan for you small business, make it a number one priority to review the 8 simple tips below for building a better marketing strategy for your business — one that puts your customers first and your business second-to-none.
1. Develop a Realistic Forward-Looking Marketing Budget
It’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Small business owners today cite customer attraction and retention as two of their most pressing concerns, but many set aside minimal budgets for marketing.
In fact, 1 in 4 small business owners report that they don’t spend any money on marketing, while just over half (56%) spend less than $500 a month. In other words, only about a quarter of business owners spend more than $500 per month on marketing.
Source: Yodle’s First Annual Small Business Sentiment Survey, Aug. 2013
Make it a mission to corner off a larger, more flexible budget to tackle new marketing opportunities to better adapt to today’s fast-changing marketplace. I’m not saying you should break the bank allocating funds to marketing. What I do recommend is that you make strategic investments on marketing offerings that better position your business in places where consumers are increasingly going to research products or services and make purchases.
Return-on-investment should be the key factor by which you measure your marketing efforts. However, be sure to give your business the flexibility to try out new marketing opportunities and ideas to see if they stick.
There’s no doubt in my mind that any business keeping with a status quo of limited marketing in today’s changing environment will only hurt their bottom line — and not just in the short run. Small businesses should be making smart investments so they are well-positioned to attract consumers now and in the future.
2. Build a Simple & Effective Website
The website is the central component of any business’ digital strategy; its how your current and potential customers can most easily find and connect with you. Given its key role, it’s astonishing that more than half of small businesses owners (52%) said their business does not have a website, according to the Yodle survey.
3. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Optimized
As consumers increasingly turn to smart phones and tablets to search for local business information and to shop products and services, it’s essential that your website is properly optimized for those experiences.
A recent Google/Nielsen study found that 59% of consumers visit a business’ website when conducting a mobile search. However, the vast majority of small business owners — 9 out of 10 — said their websites aren’t optimized for mobile, according to the Yodle survey. This represents a clear gap in small business’ ability to provide on-the-go consumers with a proper website experience, thus threatening their chances for securing business from those visitors.
4. Build a Complete & Accurate Listings Presence
It may be surprising, but a notable share of business listing information is inaccurate. In fact, a Constant Contact survey of more than 350 SMBs earlier this year found that 50% of SMBs have come across inaccurate listings for their businesses. Despite this, nearly half (49%) of those surveyed said they’ve never updated their business listings online.
5. Successfully Manage Negative Online Reviews
Online reviews are playing an increasingly central role in driving consumers’ purchasing behavior. Similar to word-of-mouth, consumers place high trust in the accuracy of online reviews. In fact, a recent Nielsen online study of 29,000 consumers across 58 countries found that about 70% of consumers trust online reviews – making them the third-most trusted form of advertising. Another recent study from Harvard Business School showed that something as simple as a one-star improvement in a Yelp business listing can deliver a noticeable increase in a restaurant’s revenue.
With the stakes so high, it’s important for small businesses to develop procedures for locating and responding to online reviews. Small business owners should spend time mapping out or improving their response plan for online reviews – especially those that place their business in a negative light
6. Build an Engaging Social Media Presence
Consumers today spend a considerable amount of time on social media interacting not only with family and friends, but increasingly with brands as well. Businesses in a variety of categories — ranging from retailers to restaurants — are successfully building social media channels to generate loyalty and engagement with their customers and potential customers. In fact, Facebook recently announced that 24 million small businesses maintain active pages on their site.
7. Take Advantage of Automated Scheduling & E-Commerce Tools
We have seen a lot of strong activity on the automated scheduling and e-commerce front. Yet despite the promise of these new offerings, many small businesses have remained on the sidelines. For example, only 39% of small business owners rely on automated appointment booking and scheduling technology, according to the Yodle survey.
8. Use Results Reporting To Inform Your Strategy
The Yodle survey found that more than half (56%) of small business owners do not measure results from their marketing. This means that those small business owners have no baseline to determine how well their marketing is doing or how to set priorities for what else they can or should be doing.
Source: Yodle’s First Annual Small Business Sentiment Survey, Aug. 2013
Develop a simple reporting structure — perhaps a monthly report that you dedicate yourself to doing — that will enable you to clearly see how all of your marketing activities are doing and their resulting impact on your business.
Author: Wesley Young
Vice President – Public Policy of the Local Search Association