Contributed by Katleen Richardson
As an entrepreneur, just like anyone else, you only have 24 hours in a day. This means that in order to get the most bang for your marketing buck, you need to have some idea of where you’re headed. It’s shocking how many startups and small businesses work on the assumption that more marketing of any kind will automatically be better, and they just use a time-consuming (and often expensive) shotgun approach to marketing, focusing on quantity rather than quality.
Aside from the fact that you just don’t have time to keep up that sort of everything-all-the-time marketing, it may not even be the best thing for your business. Have you ever unsubscribed from a company’s social media accounts simply because you kept hearing the same message several times over on every account, and it was too much like spam? Sending basically the same information out over many different channels is not good marketing – it’s just annoying, and it will result in a lot of wasted time and effort on your part.
It’s not just social media marketing that suffers from lack of planning, though. Any marketing you do without a plan can potentially end up being a waste of your time and resources. Are you aware of exactly what demographic your ads are reaching, or did you just go for the ad space that seemed to be the best value in terms of keeping initial costs down, allowing you to place more ads in more places?
If you feel like your marketing strategy is less of a marathon and more of a wild sprint in all directions, it may be time to take a step back and reassess. If you have yet to launch your business and are still in the organizational stages, then you can get started the right way before falling into the “more is more” trap.
Proper planning before you begin is essential if you, like most business owners, have limited time and resources at your disposal. Understanding who your audience is – and, more importantly, where they hang out – can be the key factor in having a successful marketing campaign. Your efforts would be better spent on narrowing your focus in the correct direction and then sending your message out in that direction, rather than just trying a lot of things at once and hoping for the best, or trying things one at a time in a random way.
Does this mean that you need to hire a marketing professional to help you? While that’s not strictly necessary in all cases, it may be worthwhile to spend at least some of your marketing budget making sure you get some sound advice. A lot depends on how much knowledge you have about how online marketing works, but either way, you’d be better off spending a small percentage of your available funds making sure things get planned correctly, than a much larger percentage randomly purchasing ad space that may not perform up to your expectations.
About the Author:
Katleen Richardson (http://www.marketing-advantedge.com) is an experienced leader who builds integrated strategies combining research, data analysis and creative thinking. She has delivered successful solutions for the publishing, financial and telecommunications industries, as well as for conference and training companies, and professional associations. Her approach is to design customer focused, cost-effective solutions based on cross functional collaboration and results-based metrics.
