Every entrepreneur knows the importance of marketing. Without proper marketing, you would not be able to get information about your product or service out there. This is the way you increase your number of customers.
Unfortunately, marketing is not always so cut and dried for small businesses. For one, your potential market is limited by your level of operation. This leads to question marks of just how much more you will gain from prioritizing marketing. You can only accept so many orders, for the good of your working capital. By the way, if you are turning down orders right now in this economy good on you. Teach us.
Secondly, it will cost you a lot more effort and money than you expect. At least, if you go for the most suitable channels this is what will happen. No entrepreneur wants to waste money. Perhaps investing in new production methods may have greater effect on your bottomline than marketing. This thing can be pretty ambiguous.
You’ll say you are boosting your brand. But what is brand even? Can you translate it on your financial statements? To make your efforts more concrete, you can borrow from a tool that many productive people use for their personal life – smart goals.
Here we go:
Set specific goals
Have you ever undertaken your campaign just to gain more exposure? Unfortunately, you were wrong. Setting losely defined strategic goals like this lead you to the wrong path. Why? Because you won’t really have focus. You won’t even know how much effort to put. What you should do instead is be specific from now on, like a woman who knows what she wants. A specific marketing goal can be like getting 50 inquiries – which would be up to you to convert into sales (a totally different thing).
Measure your success or failure
The whole point of being specific is to be able to monitor. You need to know how close you are to your goal. If things are not working out, you would need to figure out whether the problem is fixable or it’s time to cut your loses. Your money, your energy is limited. I don’t think you want to waste it on moonshots. It’s usually so simple to define. Like, are you close to 50 inquiries or not.
Let your goals be achievable
Listen, just because we all want things doesn’t mean we’ll actually get them. Sometimes it is important to know what is realistic. The best way to arrive at this knowledge is understanding the process of achieving your goal. What will your marketing process look like so you attain the 50 inquiries we keep harping about? If you know, you will be well placed to allocate resources and track who is responsible for what.
I found some good tips, I thought to share with you, on how to go about your process.
Why are you doing what your doing?
“Woah, values in business? We are here to make money.” Yes. This is only a question of how you are extending yourself. You need to be sure that getting involved in marketing is what will bring the biggest change to your business. Otherwise you will be putting the right kind of effort at the wrong time. Remember the 80/20 rule on what determines success? If what you want to do is not relevant in the moment, you can always postpone it. Changing your mind doesn’t make you weak, only adaptable.
Always have a deadline
Pressure is good because it keeps you on your toes. If you’re a nice person and just want to take it easy, use time to maintain healthy pressure on yourself. You don’t just want to achieve goals, you want to be efficient in realizing them. You also need to move on to better things as soon as possible since facts are quickly evolving around you. Don’t be the entrepreneur who was left behind.