We recently wrapped up our latest Business Booster event and got to meet some amazing people while we were there. For those of you who missed out, we discussed how SME marketing support strategies can help you win the business battle.
We talked about a variety of areas, but here are the three main takeaways from our talk.
‘Business Battle’ - The business battle is the process of getting your business established and running. In terms of an SME, it is making sure you have a stable income that allows your business to grow.
Takeaway 1: No Marketing = No Sale
The first thing that will help you win the business battle, more than anything else, is marketing.
Marketing will, hands-down, win the business battle before your service is involved, before financials are involved, before your team management structure is involved.
If marketing isn’t leading it, you will basically have no customers or a very limited supply.
If you have no customers, then you have no business. This is quite a lonely place to be, sitting, staring at a phone, waiting for it to ring.
Looking from this perspective, just imagine you were a chef, and you had all the skills and all the ability to create a Michelin star meal, however, you have no ingredients to put into the pan.
All you’ve got is a grumpy chef and an empty pan and not much hope of a tasty meal. The same thing will exist in business if you don’t have any customers.
Making sure you implement a marketing strategy is vital to your business’ success.
Takeaway 2: One and Done Client
Quite often businesses have a ‘one and done’ approach to their clients.
It’s very easy to focus on gaining that first order, doing a fantastic job, fulfilling that order, and then moving on to fulfil the next new order that comes in.
This is hard work to maintain.
The cost and effort of acquiring that new customer each time is high, not to mention the fact that as the business owner, you end up focusing on the here and now demands on your time, rather than planning and looking ahead. Or indeed knowing where your next bit of business is going to come from, for certain!
Whereas what we ought to be doing with our marketing, is looking at how you build that lifetime value.
How can you get your clients to come back again and again, maintaining customer loyalty?
It’s a wasted opportunity in terms of ongoing value if you don’t focus on bringing that customer back. By tweaking your strategy to include the nurturing of your existing clients, you can market to people who already have bought into your business, which is simpler and more effective than gaining a new client.
We’re not saying don’t focus on the first-time purchase but making sure you have a strategy to nurture your existing clients makes it easier to maintain their business, and have repeat orders. This is a very cost-effective way to run your business.
For example, a solicitor may receive a conveyancing contract for someone buying a house. They could become the solicitor for all of their key life stages – from creating a will once the house has been purchased, family law, criminal law, probate services, consumer rights or job-related legal services, or simply when they move house again. By staying in touch with that person in a relevant way in the long-term could generate a high lifetime value from that first small conveyancing contract.
Takeaway 3: Pulling Teeth
When it comes to a small business and its marketing, quite often it is like pulling teeth, with amateur extractions and subsequent pain.
Often, a company will assign a team member to an in-house marketing role, taking away valuable time that could be spent on the role they are assigned to originally.
It needs to be taken into consideration if this is the case, that members of staff have the time, tools, interest and skills to do the job effectively.
Why SMEs need marketing support
We loved speaking at our last Business Booster event and discussing marketing support for small to medium businesses.
We know it can be hard to juggle everything in a business, but marketing is a vital area for any business to make its mark on the world. It’s the lynchpin of a successful business and too often smaller businesses can miss the bigger market opportunities, both in terms of what is most cost-effective but also what generates the greatest impact to the bottom line.
This is where some expert marketing support can really make the difference between an ok business performance, and a thriving one.
