In the last several weeks, we’ve talked with a number of current and potential small business clients. And the conversations were, to be honest, somewhat sobering in the sense that many companies are facing the same marketing and business challenges. To be sure, the deck is stacked against them compared with the capabilities of larger entities. And the data often proves that out. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. After 5 years, that number rises to about 50 percent.
As you might guess, nearly all of the challenges – one way or another – stem from the same issue: Lack of access to financial capital or unwillingness to take on costs due to risk. Having money is the great equalizer, after all. If you spend it right, you can make many of the challenges disappear. But that’s the conundrum in this case – small businesses are defined by not having much money to start with, and many can’t spend more until they make more. The outgrowth of all that is ultimately they face certain challenges that larger businesses don’t necessarily have. Here are the 5 common challenges we see – and how to overcome them, especially if you’re on a budget.
Challenge No. 1: Making Audiences Aware You Exist
Awareness is perhaps the biggest challenge any small business faces. “If only people knew about my products / services” is the common refrain we hear from the companies we interact with. And we get it. But there are only two real options to overcome this if you’re a small business: Advertising or, if you don’t have the budget, aggressive guerilla marketing, often through content development, social media, email, mobile, or other avenues to stay top-of-mind.
How to overcome this challenge: If you need help with the former, we would recommend contacting a marketing agency like us. Certainly, you can do some things yourself but, for a myriad of reasons, it’s best to have a specialist help you with advertising as you can waste lots of money easily if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Regardless, most small companies (by necessity) have to opt for the latter approach. Here are a few ways to get aggressive in marketing that mostly only cost your time and resources:
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- Create compelling video on a budget. If you like being in front of a camera, or have a concept in mind that you can execute yourself, you should go for it. We provide some tips in the link of how to do this on a budget.
- Develop a regular blog post. And make sure to distribute it to your various social channels, your website, in email and anywhere else you can.
- Post on social media regularly. The more aggressive you are, the more you’ll be rewarded by the various social media platforms. Download our 2022 social media guide to learn all the tips and tricks for each channel.
- Improve your SEO. One way small companies improve their visibility is to rank higher in search results. We provide the 5 key steps to starting your own SEO initiative.
- Choose an inexpensive email platform and begin sending emails to audiences regularly. Make sure to segment your lists and personalize the emails as much as possible.
Challenge No. 2: Access to Technology and Data
It’s no secret that money buys access to the latest technology and data science. Many larger companies now employ teams of data scientists who analyze customer behavior for the smallest clues that can help them sell more or reach a larger potential audience. Money also helps larger companies access platforms and tools that allow them to create great designs, video, and other assets that boost their visibility. Small businesses, on the other hand, often don’t have any of these. Many of the companies we’ve talked to haven’t even set up basic analytics, much less any sophisticated data modeling. That’s not their fault but here are some suggestions along those lines to get up to speed faster.
How to overcome this challenge: One of the first things we recommend small businesses do is put themselves in a data mindset. What we mean by that is simply start focusing on particular types of data that will help them better inform and optimize their operations. What’s important to do here:
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- At a minimum, set up Google Analytics on your website. It’s free and it’s pretty easy to do yourself (at least installing it on your site and collecting data). We would also recommend, if you site has a lead-generation mechanism or sale conversions of any kind, that you set up goal and conversion tracking too. (If you need help with the latter, contact us and we’re happy to do it for you for a minimal fee.) Here are some areas to look at in particular:
- Traffic sources
- Unique visitors
- Conversion by various traffic sources
- Popular pages
- Audience demographics and devices used
- Conversion events or frequently bought products/services
- At a minimum, set up Google Analytics on your website. It’s free and it’s pretty easy to do yourself (at least installing it on your site and collecting data). We would also recommend, if you site has a lead-generation mechanism or sale conversions of any kind, that you set up goal and conversion tracking too. (If you need help with the latter, contact us and we’re happy to do it for you for a minimal fee.) Here are some areas to look at in particular:
Note: If you have an e-commerce store on a platform such as Shopify, it typically will also provide built-in reports that can be generated as well.
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- If you use email marketing as a tool, start regularly checking the analytics on your email performance. Most email platforms also have the capability to send you regular reports so you don’t necessarily need to go to the platform to look for them. A few key areas to consider looking at here include:
- Open rates by email and overall
- Click-thru rates by email and overall
- Total conversions by email and overall
- Conversion rate by email and overall
- Unsubscribes by email
- If you use email marketing as a tool, start regularly checking the analytics on your email performance. Most email platforms also have the capability to send you regular reports so you don’t necessarily need to go to the platform to look for them. A few key areas to consider looking at here include:
Outside of data, we also see the need for small businesses to invest in certain technology and platforms that can help them either create great marketing assets at limited cost or provide them-much need intelligence to analyze the competition. Among them, many are inexpensive:
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- Design tools
- Video tools
- Competitive analysis platforms
As part of this, we’ve compiled this list of 14 budget-friendly tools that can help you boost your marketing. Take a look.
Challenge No. 3: Marketing Sophistication
Sometimes marketing hinges on the smallest things. And the difference between a successful campaign might come down to executing on the minutiae (the language of a call-to-action button, the subject line of an email, the headline of a paid search ad, the audience targeting and segmentation, the budget spend on a campaign). On top of that, what’s hard about this one is that even if you know the right thing to do in marketing, it’s another thing to actually do it. Even large businesses often fail at these same issues because there are only a limited amount of resources for each task.
How to overcome this challenge: For those so inclined to do marketing themselves, we recommend taking some basic marketing training, whether that’s in specific topics such as SEO, paid media, content, email marketing, or any other area. Most good training can help you get started with the practical help you need to implement foundational marketing best practices.
For those who have some budget to hire, we always recommend trying to make sure you’re hiring experts. That may seem obvious. But we’ve heard many stories where small companies think they are paying for marketing experts but actually get much less experienced personnel. A few questions to ask here before any engagement:
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- Who is actually working on the account?
- Can that individual talk in detail about the strategies and tactics they’ll employ as they implement my marketing?
- Do I have an experienced person overseeing the implementation of my marketing?
True experts may cost a little bit more but, in the end, they’re worth it.
Challenge No. 4: Fraud & Deception
Small businesses work too hard and risk too much on their own businesses to be deceived by other business that they use to help run their operations. In the last few weeks alone, we’ve talked to companies that have been literally taken advantage of by:
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- Website platforms that make them pay in perpetuity without providing any ongoing services
- Marketing agencies that convince them to pay a lot more than what they typically do, then fail to follow through on what they promised
- Companies that sign agreements, then assign junior, inexperienced staff to that small business account.
- Companies that scam small businesses into unnecessary, long-term SEO contracts for limited websites.
- Larger entities such as Google that promise to automate processes that should never be automated.
- Ads that promise business transformation (“We’ll 10X your revenue if you take our course”) then fail to deliver on that promise.
The list here goes on and on.
How to overcome this challenge: We’ve talked about this one in the past and the seven ways to avoid getting scammed. Check out our article and make sure to avoid getting ripped off.
Challenge No. 5: Pricing, Scale & Business Model
Way back when, I used to co-own a profitable restaurant. If I recall, my then-business partner and I made about a $60k profit the first year in operation, which for a new restaurant, isn’t too bad actually. But split between us, that doesn’t up to a whole lot on the year. And while you can certainly build on that in the next year, to live in a major city, you would probably need help to pay your bills on a regular basis. With high rent due every month and cost of goods and employee wages in a prime location, you can see how costs can add up quickly. Contrast that with larger restaurant entities that had the capital to scale their operations and open multiple locations. In theory, each location they owned could bring that kind of $60k profit or more (especially with greater sophistication of workflows, volume buying discounts, and other streamlined processes they could afford to have in place). It’s one reason that, in many major areas, small businesses are all but dead as a brick-and-mortar option because they can’t compete on scale – and why only McDonald’s and big banks can.
Moreover, lack of scale also hurts non-brick-and-mortar small businesses too. After all, because larger businesses can scale costs over greater sales volume, they ultimately can reduce and squeeze prices to the point where small businesses just can’t compete. One need only look at Amazon to see a company that completely wiped out other smaller entities because they could afford to run their operations at a loss for many years.
How to overcome this challenge: This is perhaps the hardest one. Small businesses will always have a tough time competing head-to-head with any large business, especially when it comes to pricing. So, one thing we suggest small business attempt to do is create products and services (if they can) that are unique – or provide something that has a premium value in the marketplace. This is one way to avoid direct competition and just having a slate of similarly commoditized products and services. The other option: Provide a personal touch. Regardless of what you’re selling, take the time to acknowledge those who are getting to know you, those who are your current customers, or past customers, and treat them as you would want to be treated from any business. Adding that personal touch can help boost trust among your current and potential customers, making your business the one they select versus a larger entity that might not get to know them all that well.
At Marketing Nice Guys, our mission is to help you excel at digital marketing. If you’re having any of your own marketing challenges – either the ones above or others – feel free to contact us for a free consultation.