Marketing can often feel like a game for big players only. With companies like Coca-Cola spending billions each year, how can your small business compete? The truth is you don’t need to have a massive budget to be a marketing success.
Of course, the bigger the budget is, the easier it is for you to invest in ads, content, social media, and other aspects of a marketing campaign that make it a success.
Even with a small team, you can run effective and innovative campaigns that engage your personas. But how do you do this? You need to make sure that each and every member of your team is realizing their full potential and making the most of their time. This may mean prioritizing certain tasks over others, or dropping some altogether.
Follow these tips to help your marketers make the most of their talents, and ensure you have the most successful team possible:
Focus your efforts
Companies of all sizes are guilty of trying to do a little bit of everything when it comes to marketing. You often see this on social media, where brands will have accounts on every platform they can find. Unless you’re a big company with a considerable marketing department, you’re unlikely to have the time to manage numerous accounts effectively and ensure they are cohesive.
For small teams, you want to focus your efforts. Do some research to find out what platforms your audience respond best to and invest your time and money in this. This goes for all parts of marketing. It’s much better to be an expert in one area than fail in all of them. You risk damaging your brand by biting off more than you can chew, so take it one step at a time.
Identify the strengths of your team
Whether you have a team full of marketers or one main expert, find the skills and strengths of everyone. You may find that your developer is a whizz on Pinterest or that your CEO knows much more about AdWords than you thought. You won’t know what skills they have until you ask them. Either you can then have these people take charge of these aspects of marketing, or have them teach others about it. This ensures that the wealth of knowledge is shared throughout the company.
UPOD
Under Promise, Over Deliver, (UPOD) is something that can help almost every aspect of your business. If you start off your marketing by making commitments that you won’t be able to maintain, then you risk alienating potential customers way before they get the chance to be loyal to you. It’s much better to promise a newsletter on the first day of the month and deliver it, than say it will be there every Friday and miss half of them.
Things happen in a business and resources can get tight. You need to promise clients only what you can give them in a worst-case scenario. This will promote trust among your customer base, as well as within your company.
Take the time to learn
Most marketing needs to be sophisticated to be the most effective. This isn’t really to do with money and is much more focused on understanding the platform you’re using and how to make it more valuable to your business.
If you’re starting with Facebook as a marketing tool, take the time to learn everything you can about how to make the most of it. Google is your best friend and there is so much advice out there about how you can be a marketing success, as well as information from Facebook themselves. It’s easier than you think to upskill yourself if you are willing to take the time necessary to learn about it.
You should also research the best way of tracking your marketing activity on any platform you’re using, including Facebook. This is a key part of any business venture and will make it easier to see what you’re doing that’s working and what you can change to be more effective in your efforts.
