If It Ain’t Broken…Don’t Fix It!

What on earth does this mean? When it comes to small business marketing, there is no one best practice, rule, or strategy.

Just because the rest of the world is on the Internet promoting their brands, it doesn’t mean your small business marketing shouldn’t still include traditional offline marketing strategies that are working.

With all the hoopla about Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and the tons of other social networking sites, small business owners might be led to believe that they have to do a total about-face in their marketing efforts.

Or, that they must jump into the Internet with both feet without looking back. Instead, they need to analyze, evaluate and strategize.

What are Your Current Small Business Marketing Initiatives?

First, owners need to take stock of what their current small business marketing initiatives are and analyze their success rate. Are your current programs attracting qualified leads?

If something is working, keep doing it – even if it is not on the Internet. For instance, if attending or participating in trade show events results in valuable and qualified leads for your company – then trade shows are a viable marketing initiative that you should continue.

What is Your Competition Doing?

In addition, you should be analyzing your competition. What are they doing that is working? You want to do what they are doing – only you want to do it better.

Next you need to look at all your current marketing efforts and evaluate how effective they are in terms of return on investment.

Using the trade show example, attending a trade show is usually far less expensive than exhibiting at the same show (unless the show is out of town and you are bringing many employees Then of course you have travel and accommodation expenses).

But if having a booth attracts enough qualified leads (“enough” can only be determined by the business owner) that convert to sales, then the expense is worth the effort.

And exhibiting at the successful trade shows should be included as part of your overall integrated marketing strategy.

Create and Follow a Marketing Plan

The last step in your small business marketing plan is to strategize or plan. This is not a final step because your marketing strategy should be dynamic in order to remain competitive and keep up with the ever-changing market and latest technologies.

Without a clear and concise marketing plan, the small business owner can literally get lost on the Internet scrambling to try to find out where to put the most effort.

With that said, however, you DO need to have some online presence. How much will depend upon your specific business needs/niche/location of target marketing/success rate of offline marketing initiatives/etc.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is well recognized as the most cost-effective online marketing initiative and one that all businesses should be including in their marketing initatives. BOTH email marketing for prospecting and email marketing to retain current clients/customers.

Why Provide Online Exposure to Your Business Through Email Marketing? Because Email marketing Works:

• Email Marketing is Instant
• It’s Perfect for a Time Sensitive Offer
• It’s Virtually FREE
• Email goes Everywhere
• It can be Automated
• Provides More Exposure Which Means More Sales!
• The average person checks their email 2+ times/Day
• Video Email marketing is 3 to 5 times more effective
• Sales to a customer are much easier than to prospects

Video Marketing

Video marketing is another aspect of online marketing that every business should include as part of their overall marketing strategy. Using videos can help your message go viral because at its very heart, video marketing is a storytelling format for your products, services,and offers.

Take a look at a few statistics and decide for yourself if video marketing is worth your time:

• Companies that use videos get 66% more qualified leads annually
• Video marketers see an increase of 54% in brand awareness
• 62% of companies who have a video on their home page see it as an effective marketing tool

Small businesses need to focus on both the online and offline marketing initiatives that are either currently working or the ones that provide the best ROI.