Small Business Marketing Blog: Tips and Tricks to Improve your Marketing Strategy and Management Efforts
How to Use Technology to Enhance Your Digital Marketing & Promotional Strategy
When starting to focus on Marketing, it’s important to spend money and resources on the right areas.
How to Use Technology to Enhance Your Digital Marketing & Promotional Strategy
20 years ago I was wrapping up my final semester at Muhlenberg College. My major...
Computer science. Nerd stuff (and my mom did and still does say that I'm cool)... and my friends still call me Milhouse.
I didn't really enjoy coding and certainly wasn't at the top of the class, so it was time to find something else.
Cut to, 20 years later, I'm in marketing. 21 years ago, I thought that those two fields were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Digital Marketing & Technology
But in reality, digital marketing and tech overlap on a Venn Diagram.
Understanding systems, UI/UX (CRO), data, reporting, analytics, ad psychology, ad platforms and the overall business are different parts of the brain (but are important to bring a business from great to better).
While I cannot walk the walk in coding at higher than a "B-" level, that's good enough for a chunk of E-commerce and Internet marketing. SQL and HTML and "languages" that I can understand, but I maybe use those twice per year. A couple of the REAL helpful "technology" tools are...
API (Application programming interface) Data Integrations in Digital Marketing
✅ Zapier: Allows for data to seamlessly transfer between platforms without programmers (simply put, it's a prebuilt API). Think of capturing prospective leads in Facebook and pushing them to an email platform for nurturing.
Website Analytics & Tracking in Digital Marketing
✅ Google Tag Manager: Allows for adding snippets of code in the <head> of any website. So useful for analytic conversion events and other "add-ons". Another great use case, adding an email capture pop-up.
And when my "B-" level isn't good enough, I can talk the talk-ish with tech teams. Translating technical requirements from marketing speak to technical speak is an art form.
In short, while I wasn't thrilled with my C.S. degree, the learnings are still shining through.
Feel free to call me a nerd or Milhouse anytime.
How Should I Spend My Marketing Budget?
When starting to focus on Marketing, it’s important to spend money and resources on the right areas.
How Should I Spend My Marketing Budget?
While the answer can vary between industries, I think the below can be applied to the majority of businesses, especially in the B2C eCommerce and B2B space.
70%: SEO
Search engine optimization and thought leadership content for blog posts on the website, emails, and social media posts. There is a huge Venn Diagram overlap with Demand Generation here.
While SEO doesn't directly provide new interested prospects immediately, after 6-12 months, more quality prospects will find your business. With that said, having that relevant, timely content will help support other communications strategies (like email and social media)
10%: A Quality Email Marketing Platform (like Klaviyo).
Email automation and consistent campaigns that highlight thought leadership and the benefits for prospective clients will go a long way. Bonus points for lead scoring based on email and website activities. More bonus points for segmenting your audience into Hot, Warm and Cold prospects and communicating appropriately.
The goal is to own communications with your prospects and clients and not rely solely on social media platforms.
20%: Lead generation
Paid media, like Meta/Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and TikTok will help to distribute content and acquire new prospects.
This is the faucet that introduces prospects to your brand and services.
Plus, since paid media is almost always performance-based and revenue can be tied back to costs, the profit dollars can roll in after the foundation is set up.
In closing, focus on the fundamentals first, then move on to the shiny object.
What do you think, do you agree?
Beware of the Shiny Objects: Put Marketing Strategy, Management & Analytics First
As a decision maker, you should turn to your marketing strategy and analytics first before spending energy to mimic one-off successful campaigns to drive perceived quick hits. You might not need more video content, or it could be a mistake to foray into a platform that doesn’t house your audience.
Beware of the Shiny Objects: Put Marketing Strategy, Management & Analytics First
If you have a young child, I would bet that you’ve seen Moana more than eleven times. Or maybe you’ve seen it without a tiny human because hey, it’s a quality Disney movie with a pretty good message—unlike Frozen (but I digress). I bring Moana up because one of its villains is a giant crab named Tamatoa, who is obsessed with shiny objects. And I don’t want you to be like Tamatoa.
Shiny objects are always appealing as potential quick wins. Maybe you watched or heard about Jet.com’s hugely successful launch in 2015, Dollar Shave Club’s “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” campaign, or read that Snapchat is (was) the fastest growing social media platform (in 2016). But as a decision maker as a small to medium sized business, you should turn to your marketing strategy and analytics first before spending energy to mimic these thoughtful campaigns to drive perceived quick hits. You might not need more video content, or it could be a mistake to foray into a platform that doesn’t house your audience. (If your main audience is 50+ people, Snapchat is not going to magically turn your business around.)
Marketing Strategy First, Shiny Second
Simply put, before a company leaps into a shiny tactic, it should develop its underlying strategy.
By way of example, below is the outcome from a traffic-driving campaign and how it looks within Facebook, Google Adwords and Google Analytics. First, Google Analytics was implemented to track results. Note: If there is no process or system in place to read results, revisit your strategy and make sure that the correct marketing management is in place. Second, the traffic-driving campaign was set up within Facebook and Google as a pay-per-click (PPC) effort.
The two immediate tables below highlight the results from within the specific platform analytics. While these campaigns had respectable click-through rates and relatively low cost per clicks, this is only part of the story.
Facebook Ad Analytics
Google Adwords Analytics
Google Analytics
The above table highlights “Organic Search” traffic (mostly from Google search) in orange, with “Social” and “Paid Search” in red. The “Organic Search” website traffic is typically the best performing traffic as this is the audience that is raising their hand for your product or service. The goal is for all other channels to look as close to this as possible, even if not 100% obtainable.
Using “Organic Search” as our baseline, we see two red flags in Google Analytics:
High Bounce Rates: Only 1 out of 10 people in this campaign are reading past the first page. Compare this to 6 out of 10 for “Organic Search.”
Low Goal Conversion Rates: The rate is around 0.20% for this campaign, compared to nearly 7% for “Organic Search.”
This campaign, while driving traffic to the website, is actually driving poor quality traffic that is not converting into sales or any other goals (such as email capture). This campaign, while relatively easy to implement, was set up to fail as there was no strategy or thought behind it. If there was a strategy, the right traffic would be on the website and spending more time there. Herein lies the value in taking a step back and focusing on a sound, quality strategy that outlines:
Key Personas: Who are our ideal buyers? What is our core audience?
The Best Way(s) to Communicate with Them: What voice do we use, and what content can we create or serve based on buyer intent?
Measurable Goals: What are the outcomes we want to achieve, and how will we measure them?
With these elements laid out, you can:
Better target with several tactics (not just the popular ones) and utilize those that better fit the needs of your potential clients (e.g., people 45 – 55 years old with a household income above $100K);
Develop an ad or campaign that will catch your audiences’ attention (e.g., maybe video is better than a static ad for your target);
Set up a proper landing page with a Call to Action (CTA) that aligns with the campaign; and lastly
Set measurable goals (e.g., capture 30 emails during the campaign).
Marketing Analytical Elements
DBV Marketing can help every step of the way, and more details can be found on personas and targeting the correct audience here. As a resource that has guided in the marketing management process multiple times, we will outline a couple important analytical best practices to consider, using the table below as a reference.
Watch Your Website Content in Google Analytics
The website above has 19% of traffic coming from “Organic Search,” which should make up 40 – 50% of overall traffic. If you see something similar to the above in your tracking, your current website is not working the way it should. The right content will speak to your audience and bring them to your website organically. If that’s not happening, there might be a mismatch between your audience and your content.
Another content indicator is “Bounce Rate.” Based on the numbers above, 75% of people are leaving the website before clicking to another page, which means they’re not finding what they are looking for. If you see a high bounce rate, it might mean you need to create clearer calls to action or write more engaging content for our audience.
If you see numbers like the above, it can also signal an issue with your Google Analytics setup on your website and eCommerce platform.
Marketing Optimized Google Analytics Setup
Based on the table, this website only has 3 users from email in this time span, which is vastly different from what their Email Service Provider (ESP) platform suggests. Therefore, we know the ESP (e.g., Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud) isn’t communicating properly with Google Analytics. This means the analytics setup needs to be revisited before pushing forward. We can’t measure the results of a campaign if there are no results in our measuring platform.
Another indicator of a poorly implemented Google Analytics instance is a high amount of “Direct” traffic, which is usually designated as traffic that inputted a URL directly into their browser or navigated via bookmark. If you’re seeing a lot of that traffic, it can mean Google Analytics is not set up properly. This is common for companies that maintain domains (e.g., company.com) and subdomains (e.g., info.company.com). If Analytics code isn’t added correctly, Google can lose visitors’ information as they move between pages. It then falsely attributes those visitors as “Direct” visits.
Marketing Strategy & Analytics Before Temptation
Small to medium sized businesses are always looking for new ways to increase revenue, but unfortunately, there’s no surefire, universal approach. Instead, it comes down to developing a unique strategy, selecting your tactics, testing and analyzing accordingly.
Company stakeholders typically put much thought into a business plan, and a marketing plan should be no different. A thoughtful marketing strategy, while slower to implement, will save companies time, effort and resources that could otherwise be lost on the shiny tactics.
In other words, don’t be Tamatoa.
Why Your Small Business Needs Marketing
If you are a running small business, please think of marketing as more than an expense. With the proper marketing management support, marketing will be implemented correctly and will provide a positive return on your investment.
Why Your Small Business Needs Marketing
“Marketing is Just an Expense”
Many of the small businesses that I have worked with are really good at what they do. They run their operation well and provide a quality product or service to their customers; and most importantly, their customers love the widget (product or service).
But having a great widget is only part of any business. Without having a strategy or a marketing management process, no one will learn about the widget.
For many small businesses, marketing is an afterthought; a foreign concept that is perceived as an expense. When done incorrectly, that’s an accurate statement and it’s a red drain on the business bank account. But when a marketing strategy comes to life and is implemented correctly, there will be a positive ROI (return on investment).
What is Marketing?
Before diving too deep into why your small business needs a resource to guide the marketing management, it will be helpful to explore the definition of marketing…
The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines Marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”
In short, Marketing is communicating and distributing the value of your widget to the correct audience. Without knowing it, you may have already implemented some small business marketing efforts. Do you have a website? If yes, that’s great, but unfortunately, marketing is more than that. A marketing strategy and the tactics that help drive new and repeat business is always evolving.
Understanding your Small Business Marketing Needs
To provide some context around the benefits of small business marketing, a few questions below (that are normally addressed during the marketing strategy & audit phase within DBV Marketing’s marketing management process) are important to understand why marketing is an ROI driven benefit and more than an expense.
Do you know your buyers’ demographics?
Where do they live?
What’s their household income?
What is their job title?
Why did your buyers initially choose your product or service?
Are you using this reason in how you communicate your offering?
Do you consistently communicate with your prospects and clients now?
Do the touch points represent the brand accurately?
Are you conveying the right message at the right time (i.e. are welcome emails set up)?
Do you have enough leads (prospects) and are enough of them converting to paying customers?
Are you happy with your revenue and bottom line?
If you answered more “no” than “yes”, then marketing is a good investment in your small business. When marketing is implemented properly, it helps a business grown. Waiting until there is a need means that it’s too late.
Marketing Analytics and Insights Drive Results
As a data-driven marketer, I enjoy utilizing data and insights to support decisions and direction (most of the time, Google Analytics is my tool of choice). Unfortunately, there are not many hard statistics to support the ROI benefits of a marketing investment, but I did find one. According to Neilsen, the average marketing return on a $1 investment is $1.09. Would you like to earn $0.09 for each dollar spent after COGS and related expenses? A 9% increase to the bottom line (net earnings) is certainly a return that most investors would take.
What to Expect from your Small Business Marketing Efforts
As a seasoned marketer, it’s my duty to inform you that there is no magical marketing bullet and that results do not happen overnight. Anyone that tells you otherwise is not the right partner for you. However, by utilizing the DBV Marketing systematic approach that consists of learnings from industry best practices, competitor insights and available data from clients and other internal sources, your small business will start to realize results in few months.
And even though all industries are different, the good news is that while your small business may not have much of a budget, there are many marketing tactics that span across industries that are low or no cost. One example is utilizing the free tools that are available to anyone, such as Google My Business. This digital tool allows for increased exposure on page one of Google search rankings, while also explaining more about your widget to potential clients. There are more examples like this that apply in the digital and offline spaces.
In the end, if you have happy clients, you can grow your business. Let DBV Marketing help you realize your potential through insight driven, and ROI focused marketing.