Welcome to the second episode in my Marketing for Small Business miniseries! Here we talk about moving past the initial frenzy of setting up your small business marketing systems.
You’ve chosen a platform, you’ve set up optimized profiles (or hired someone to help!), you’ve networked and passed out business cards. You’re open for business, even netting a few clients.
What’s the next phase of marketing that is actually sustainable for you as a busy business owner?
In this episode, I talk about the 3 keys to moving off the hamster wheel of marketing your small business. You can listen here:
Table of Contents
In last week’s episode, I started from the very beginning. (You can find the Total Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Small Business here.)
I discussed how to choose marketing platforms for your business, how to hone in on a channel that is best for your specific business niche, and how to go all out on it in the beginning.
Reaching the Next Level of Marketing Your Small Business
Today’s episode covers that period right after launching a business, where you start to get traction.
You might be getting marketing traction, but at the cost of your sanity.
I want to walk you through what actions to take to avoid burning out completely at this juncture.
Because this is a crucial turning point. Sometimes the marketing factor can be what burns out a business person entirely, so I don’t want that to happen with your business. (Even if you don’t have a business, a lot of these concepts I hit on today can be broadly applied to areas of life outside of business. So, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, welcome!)
Strategizing Next Steps by Looking at Feedback
Let’s say you’ve got one or two marketing channels running for at least a couple of months.
My first key to thriving in your business marketing is to set up and learn at least one feedback system.
What do I mean by this?
You might be marketing on a website and a Facebook page, for instance. Because you have finite resources, you are putting a certain amount of money or time or both towards marketing on those various platforms.
At first, you can throw a lot of your resources out towards marketing, and I’d actually encourage you to do so to get the ball rolling. But then allow that feedback to teach you what is working and what’s not— because you don’t want to stay in this weird no man’s land of not knowing if a marketing channel is working for you. You definitely need that feedback.
Use a Systematic Look at the Data
The former teacher in me is reminded of a practice that was drilled into us in our trainign: collect data, data, data.
We’d analyze the data and reflect on how we were going to teach based on how the students responded to the lesson. If students weren’t understanding what we were teaching, then we had to go back and reteach, maybe in a different way, maybe at a slower pace, etc.
What we didn’t want to do was just plow ahead and teach an entire course and leave our students in the dust.
To bring that teaching analogy to marketing your small business, it would be a painful and costly mistake to throw all of your resources into pieces of content or ads that aren’t actually bringing you business.
Internet Fame Doesn’t Equal Sales
Let’s delineate between what’s actually bringing you sales and giving you an audience online– because the two are not necessarily the same.
They often go hand in hand. But it’s crucial to realize that they are different, because likes and comments and shares on Facebook don’t necessarily equate to sales. Engagement on these platforms is usually good and something to strive for, because building an audience means you’re building brand awareness.
But a word of caution: Chasing likes is not the full picture if you want to stay in business.
If you are simply trying to build an audience to build an audience, then go for it. But I suggest that you really dig deep and see what’s affecting your sales.
Examples of Feedback Systems in Marketing Your Small Business
What do I mean by feedback systems?
Look into the analytics on whatever platforms you’re using.
This means if you run a social media page for your business (usually if you create a business or creator account) the platform will provide you with analytics to show you all kinds of metrics like your engagement and audience demographics. You can play around with the different graphs and see how the engagement changed over time, or see which posts got the most traction and most clicks. Study these platform analytics regularly.
Another way to gain marketing feedback is through your website. If you made a website for your business, for example, you’ll want to look at the website analytics.
If you made a website through WordPress, like a blog, then you can connect it to Google Analytics. (There are other plugins for checking your website analytics, but Google Analytics will do the job.)
Look at your website analytics, and you can see how many page views and sessions your site has gotten. You can find where (online) people are coming from, which is important. Are visitors drawn in from Google search? Double down on your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. Are the majority of visitors hailing from Instagram? Now you know to keep pushing your Instagram strategy.
Once you look into these feedback systems, your analytics, that should tell you where to go from there. That should help you create a media plan, because at first, when you’re trying new things, it’s kind of like throw spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Now it’s time to follow what’s working and stop what’s not. You can’t sustain huffing it out forever– you’ve got a business to run, after all!
Make it a habit to check your data, not with a fine-toothed comb, but in a general sense that is helpful enough to provide you with feedback. Systematize this data check so you don’t skip on this important step.
In-person Feedback Systems
There are also important face-toface feedback systems to give crucial information.
You could ask your customers directly where they found you. How did they find out about you? Don’t knock the old-fashioned way of doing it.
You could conduct customer surveys. If you are out with people a lot and you’re interacting with your customers, you could make it a habit of including that in your conversation with them. Or, if you have an email list, you could include the survey in your emails. Try to include some sort of incentive or discount for people who fill out the survey, because that’s more effective, and you could ask people how they discovered you.
Draw up a graph or chart and as you see and collect more and more responses, things will begin to reveal themselves. Did the people find you on Facebook? Did they find you through Google search? Did they just hear about you through word of mouth?
These are important things to learn. Don’t wait way too long to assess your data on this important feedback system.
Have a Plan in Mind for the Pace of Marketing
The second key to avoiding burnout once you get started with marketing your business is to get comfortable with the different energy levels of marketing a business.
(Okay, so maybe not necessarily comfy, but aware.)
In the very, very beginning it’s going to be a sprint. We have to throw a good amount of intensity at something at first to make any progress.
The oft-sought “balance” is not necessarily something you should seek at this stage in the game. Later, but certainly not now.
Get used to the rhythms of an intense period in the beginning and then it tapering down, as you get more used to the job and the different functions of your business.
Start creating systems for the regular tasks of your business. Create habits. For example, every Monday you do x, every Tuesday you complete y task.
(If you’re interested in systems building and habits building, I’ve studied that type of thing a lot, like James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” and BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits.” Also, there’s a podcaster and YouTuber named Ali Abdaal who talks about different productivity methods– all of these are great sources of information and inspiration.)
As an example from my teaching days: The beginning of the school year was always a marathon of intensity. It was a test of survival, even with subsequent years of teachign under my belt. That new year and new group of kids just always needed a lot of setup.
I would go into campus on the weekends, stay late after school every day, go in early in the mornings. It felt literally insane. But in those intense Augusts I would always, always prioritize like setting up systems to get the classroom up and running smoothly. Like, super smooth.
What helped me survive all of this is knowing the road map ahead. I would expect that intense sprint of an early fall and then I would finally catch a break and like have more and more regular, like normal person hours by the winter. By springtime we got in a good groove and were thriving– just in time to end the school year and start a new one.
Building a successful small business is tough work. Expect these crazy different rhythms instead of “balance”– that can come later.
If you want to succeed at something like this, you really have to sprint for a bit– to throw intensity, volume, and speed at it and then afterwards, once you establish yourself more, then you can slow down or even hand off jobs.
Relinquish the Work Load by Hiring Out Tasks
The third key to a sustainable small business marketing plan is handing off work.
It’s a key turning point for all business owners, and not just in marketing, but in other tasks, as well.
You’re emerging from that initial period and climbing toward the middle stage.
You’ve set up systems, you’ve gotten your feet wet and you’re at least a little bit used to your marketing channel or channels by now. Now is the time to pass on at least one task– maybe several if you can.
It helps to be bringing in money to then hire someone to do whatever task. (You don’t have to hire an employee or learn how to become an HR person all of the sudden. This could be a contracted worker.)
You cannot sustain a business by continuing to do everything yourself. Believe me– I know, because I’ve been there trying to do it all myself.
An especially great resource on this point is a book called “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber. He writes that most people who start a business from their passion are stuck in a “technician”role– the person who produces the product or service because they’re passionate about it, of course!
But what one needs to do to have a successful business is not only produce the offering but have a managerial perspective. Think of zooming out and getting this bird’s eye view of your business. That manager takes care of all the aspects of the business– finance, marketing, customer satisfaction– not just producing.
If you have a baking business, and you’re microscopically focused on the baking aspect but not the other demands, then you’ll soon run yourself ragged trying to keep up.
If you have a web design business but are too granular when it comes to the details of creating your pages, you’ll have a tough time juggling your other duties.
It’s time to ask yourself: Is this a hobby or a business? Because if it’s a business, you need to view things from that boss point of view, not merely an impassioned practitioner.
Need to off-load some of your marketing responsibilities? From copywriting for your website to optimizing your social profiles to creating content strategy, I’m here for you at Effective Media by Charmaine. Pop by my service page for more details or fill out a contact form to get in touch.
Thanks for joining in on the (Mostly) Stay-at-Home Mom podcast– there’s one more part to the series, so be sure to subscribe on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify to get the latest episode. You can also catch the episodes with one click back to the homepage of this site, where there’s a player full of each program.
I’d love to hear from you: Have you started marketing your small business? Which channels have you set up so far?