Marketing Your Business: 4 Key Questions to Ask Yourself
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 9:43 am
Why aren’t my marketing and advertising strategies generating leads and sales?” This is a question we often get asked by business owners.
If you're wondering the same thing, here are four important questions that can help you understand why your marketing and sales activities aren't delivering the results you want...and what you can do to fix it.
1. Who manages your marketing?
Nine times out of 10, it's the business owner or someone else who has other responsibilities who has been asked to handle marketing "in their spare time." If this is you, you need to change the way you do things.
Hire someone who is more knowledgeable than you in marketing. Without the help of a qualified and experienced person , who will devote all of his or her time to the marketing activities of your business, you will probably never achieve the level of growth you are aiming for.
Here are three effective ways to ensure your business has the right marketing resources. You can choose the one that best suits your situation.
Hire a full-time marketing specialist. Make sure this person has a recent post-secondary degree in marketing and a few years of experience. Or, if like me, they graduated a while ago, make sure they have been working in the industry, have kept up to date with the latest trends and channels in marketing, and have taken relevant training over the years. Look for someone with experience in both traditional and digital marketing, a strong practical mind, and a passion for marketing. Ask yourself if they will be able to update your website and are proficient in search engine optimization techniques . Can they provide examples of how they increased organic traffic in their previous role? Have they ever used a marketing plan, or better yet, created one? Have they ever used a social media content calendar and managed social media posts ? Does she have Google Analytics and Google AdWords certifications? After hiring a qualified person, review your current situation with her and implement a marketing plan . Now you are well on your way to making your marketing more effective and growing your business.
Hire a part-time or contract marketing specialist (set number of hours per week). If your needs or budget don’t initially justify a full-time position, a good alternative might be to hire someone to dedicate 15 to 20 hours per week to better direct your marketing efforts. Can you use this opportunity to assign them to reception or administrative duties? No. As a marketing specialist (see attributes listed above), this person must be able to apply their skills fully to the growth of your business.
Work with an agency that cares about helping your business and is willing to give it the attention and priority it requires. We’ve found that smaller agencies tend to like to work with businesses that are underserved by larger agencies. They typically offer marketing support services for an hourly rate, and when a company with a limited budget hires advertising database them to manage digital ads, they usually charge a commission of 20% of ad spend. They can bring a variety of skills to support your business, which can be beneficial if you want to keep your headcount down and be able to scale up or down. However, this option requires you to designate someone to manage the relationship with the agency, which means it requires some attention on your part. It also requires you to do your homework, meaning you need to have your business goals in hand and work with the agency to plan the coming year around them.
2. Do you have a marketing plan?
Do you have a marketing plan that aligns with your company’s current goals? Your teams and agency partners need to create a plan focused on achieving your business goals. Without this plan, teams will be sailing aimlessly, like a ship without a rudder.
For business owners, building a successful marketing strategy is not a given. In many cases, it is not a priority for them, but as their business grows, such a strategy becomes essential. First, ask yourself the basic questions discussed here: “who?”, “what?”, “where?” and “how much?” Then, you can improve your marketing to achieve the desired growth.
Also, make sure your marketing plan includes key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure results, and that it outlines the responsibilities of the people who manage it. Your plan should also cover the basics like optimizing the user experience on your website, optimizing it for mobile devices, and setting up web analytics tools so you can measure the results of your marketing efforts.
3. What budget are you able to devote to marketing?
Commit to dedicating the budget necessary for your marketing plan to succeed. Diving into marketing with a few hundred dollars a month won’t get you the results you want. Instead, establish a comfortable, carefully considered budget that can help you achieve your business goals and execute your marketing strategy.
Have you assessed the amount of effort required to manage your marketing channels so that you get a few things right versus many things wrong? To improve your marketing strategy, do less, but do it better. Adopt a 70-20-10 approach by spending 70% of your time on what works best and makes money; 20% on your next best option, the one with potential for profitability; and then 10% on trying new methods. This approach helps focus your team. It also reduces the “new toy syndrome,” which makes it seem like you have to try everything new to be successful in marketing and only generates poorly targeted responses.
As you begin to spend money on your marketing, remember to ask yourself the following questions:
Are you spending enough? If you haven't taken the time to properly assess your budget, you probably don't know exactly how much you'll need to spend to get results.
Are you spending too much? Are you spending a lot of money for little results? If you feel like you didn't get your money's worth, you probably are.
Are you spending without any idea of how your money is being used or, worse, without getting any results?
4. How do you manage to reach your customers?
Have you thought carefully about your customer journey and how they buy your product or service? Different marketing channels don’t all produce the same results, and not all of your customers are necessarily accessible through the same channel. Choose the channels that are most appropriate for your product or service, and keep them manageable within your team’s capabilities. Also, look at the channels your competition uses to see how you stack up against them.
Have you followed these tips for success? Are you having trouble finding your way around? Tell us about your experience. We'll also be happy to answer your questions.
If you're wondering the same thing, here are four important questions that can help you understand why your marketing and sales activities aren't delivering the results you want...and what you can do to fix it.
1. Who manages your marketing?
Nine times out of 10, it's the business owner or someone else who has other responsibilities who has been asked to handle marketing "in their spare time." If this is you, you need to change the way you do things.
Hire someone who is more knowledgeable than you in marketing. Without the help of a qualified and experienced person , who will devote all of his or her time to the marketing activities of your business, you will probably never achieve the level of growth you are aiming for.
Here are three effective ways to ensure your business has the right marketing resources. You can choose the one that best suits your situation.
Hire a full-time marketing specialist. Make sure this person has a recent post-secondary degree in marketing and a few years of experience. Or, if like me, they graduated a while ago, make sure they have been working in the industry, have kept up to date with the latest trends and channels in marketing, and have taken relevant training over the years. Look for someone with experience in both traditional and digital marketing, a strong practical mind, and a passion for marketing. Ask yourself if they will be able to update your website and are proficient in search engine optimization techniques . Can they provide examples of how they increased organic traffic in their previous role? Have they ever used a marketing plan, or better yet, created one? Have they ever used a social media content calendar and managed social media posts ? Does she have Google Analytics and Google AdWords certifications? After hiring a qualified person, review your current situation with her and implement a marketing plan . Now you are well on your way to making your marketing more effective and growing your business.
Hire a part-time or contract marketing specialist (set number of hours per week). If your needs or budget don’t initially justify a full-time position, a good alternative might be to hire someone to dedicate 15 to 20 hours per week to better direct your marketing efforts. Can you use this opportunity to assign them to reception or administrative duties? No. As a marketing specialist (see attributes listed above), this person must be able to apply their skills fully to the growth of your business.
Work with an agency that cares about helping your business and is willing to give it the attention and priority it requires. We’ve found that smaller agencies tend to like to work with businesses that are underserved by larger agencies. They typically offer marketing support services for an hourly rate, and when a company with a limited budget hires advertising database them to manage digital ads, they usually charge a commission of 20% of ad spend. They can bring a variety of skills to support your business, which can be beneficial if you want to keep your headcount down and be able to scale up or down. However, this option requires you to designate someone to manage the relationship with the agency, which means it requires some attention on your part. It also requires you to do your homework, meaning you need to have your business goals in hand and work with the agency to plan the coming year around them.
2. Do you have a marketing plan?
Do you have a marketing plan that aligns with your company’s current goals? Your teams and agency partners need to create a plan focused on achieving your business goals. Without this plan, teams will be sailing aimlessly, like a ship without a rudder.
For business owners, building a successful marketing strategy is not a given. In many cases, it is not a priority for them, but as their business grows, such a strategy becomes essential. First, ask yourself the basic questions discussed here: “who?”, “what?”, “where?” and “how much?” Then, you can improve your marketing to achieve the desired growth.
Also, make sure your marketing plan includes key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure results, and that it outlines the responsibilities of the people who manage it. Your plan should also cover the basics like optimizing the user experience on your website, optimizing it for mobile devices, and setting up web analytics tools so you can measure the results of your marketing efforts.
3. What budget are you able to devote to marketing?
Commit to dedicating the budget necessary for your marketing plan to succeed. Diving into marketing with a few hundred dollars a month won’t get you the results you want. Instead, establish a comfortable, carefully considered budget that can help you achieve your business goals and execute your marketing strategy.
Have you assessed the amount of effort required to manage your marketing channels so that you get a few things right versus many things wrong? To improve your marketing strategy, do less, but do it better. Adopt a 70-20-10 approach by spending 70% of your time on what works best and makes money; 20% on your next best option, the one with potential for profitability; and then 10% on trying new methods. This approach helps focus your team. It also reduces the “new toy syndrome,” which makes it seem like you have to try everything new to be successful in marketing and only generates poorly targeted responses.
As you begin to spend money on your marketing, remember to ask yourself the following questions:
Are you spending enough? If you haven't taken the time to properly assess your budget, you probably don't know exactly how much you'll need to spend to get results.
Are you spending too much? Are you spending a lot of money for little results? If you feel like you didn't get your money's worth, you probably are.
Are you spending without any idea of how your money is being used or, worse, without getting any results?
4. How do you manage to reach your customers?
Have you thought carefully about your customer journey and how they buy your product or service? Different marketing channels don’t all produce the same results, and not all of your customers are necessarily accessible through the same channel. Choose the channels that are most appropriate for your product or service, and keep them manageable within your team’s capabilities. Also, look at the channels your competition uses to see how you stack up against them.
Have you followed these tips for success? Are you having trouble finding your way around? Tell us about your experience. We'll also be happy to answer your questions.