What Every Small Business Owner Needs to Understand About Marketing
Save time and frustration by understanding these core fundamentals of small business marketing.
I know, you’re wearing a lot of hats. Accountant, secretary, social media strategist, and more. You don’t have time or the budget to market wrong. You need more sales now! You know how great your product / service is … so why are you having such a hard time getting people to pay for it?
In the beginning, it probably felt like marketing was going to be easy. After all, there are so many ways to do it.
Many of our clients come to us because:
They’ve had conflicting advice from coaches, contractors, friends
They are burned out trying to do it on their own
They are so overwhelmed they don’t know where to start
It’s unfortunately very normal to feel that way! Most small business owners start without marketing experience or a marketing team to guide them.
We’ll go over the core basics together and if you need more help figuring out next steps, let us know. We offer supportive services and Expert Clarity Calls for those who just want answers.
1 Market where your ideal client is, not where you feel the most comfortable showing up.
Often small business owners pick a platform that makes sense to their brain because let’s be honest, being a small business owner requires so much learning that if anything can be easier, that seems like a huge win.
Maybe you told yourself that you’ll just use it for awhile until you find more time … more money … more clients. The problem is, it’s hard to get those things (time, money, clients) without marketing correctly.
If your ideal client is on Facebook, that’s where you need to be. If they lurk on LinkedIn, that’s where you need to show up. If they read the local newspaper, get ad space or invest in PR. If they get stuck commuting in traffic, get a billboard or figure out what radio station they list to.
Think about it this way: your audience is at a conference.
There are themed rooms and you’re invited to speak in one of them. Are you going to go to the room that you personally find the most interesting or the room where your audience is already hanging out?
The best-case scenario would be walking into a room where they all are already, right?
It’s the same with social media.
If you’re on a platform your audience isn’t hanging out on, you’re going to have a much more difficult time trying to connect with them because they aren’t actually there.
Don’t try to convince them to hang out with you on a platform they don’t want to be on. It’s difficult to convince anyone to do anything, so save that energy for convincing them to buy from you!
Step into a room where they already are and capture their attention.
2 Approach your marketing as an experiment.
Chances are, you’re not going to get it right the first time. After all, you don’t have as much data or daily presence as a large corporation does. You need to gather that information!
Here are some easy ways you can do that:
Track your data.
What web pages are doing well? What posts were successful? What days of the week got low engagement? This data will help you figure out if you need to change your timing, platform, topic, etc. It may be one or all three.
Create a plan and switch it up.
If you don’t have a plan, it’s hard to tell what’s working and what isn’t. By creating a plan, even if it isn’t perfect, you can modify it until it works for you. Otherwise, all you have are questions. Even business owners who randomly go viral end up in much the same place because they can’t replicate it. Was it the time of the post? The hashtag? The topic? The post type? The phase of the moon? Set constants and identify your variables.
Be consistent.
If you’re only posting in sprints, then your reach is going to drop. Not only will you have to retrain your platform, your audience isn’t going to have you as part of their routine. If you want them to show up, you need to as well.
Need help posting consistently?
We help small businesses and nonprofits by:
Creating Canva templates
Designing posts in batches
Having monthly strategy calls
Writing content
Giving caption guidance
3 Make sure you’re marketing the right thing.
If you’re trying to sell something that you want to sell but your audience doesn’t want to buy, you’ll need to market to a new audience.
If you’re trying to sell something your audience wants to buy but you don’t want to offer, you’re going to have to either accept that you need to change your business or you need to market to a new audience.
For example, Stacey launches her coaching business for accountants.
She sets up her Instagram account and finds success in posting Reels with accounting tips. Yet over time, she finds that her following consists mostly of small business owners trying to understand their accounting.
Stacey has a few options. She can change her business to focusing on education for small business owners, or she can change her content to target accountants.
Some people find a new passion this way. Others dramatically increase their risk of burnout because they no longer love what they do.
Marketing gold is selling something you want to sell (a core offer or product) to an audience that wants to buy it.
Health relationships only flourish when both parties are engaged. Otherwise, it’s not sustainable.
Find this alignment could be as simple as:
Switching a product from a course to a membership because your audience craves community in addition to learning.
Creating a freebie that answers the questions your clients keep asking.
Investing in an ad to reach an interested audience if your current audience is only interacting with your free services.
4 Marketing is always evolving.
This unfortunately means:
You will always need to be educating yourself on trends, technology, and software updates. This means precious time and sometimes resources dedicated to learning the “next new thing.” As your business grows, this could be a great area to invest in so that you can rely on a specialist who lives and breathes these updates so you don’t have to!
What works will change, so you’ll need to modify your approach. This need to adjust can be exhausting — especially when you’re trying to do the right thing by planning ahead.
Remember when Reels were introduced?
Suddenly static posts were barely getting reach and people had to learn how to stage their space, record videos, and edit. Once everyone made the switch, suddenly there was a ton of competition and reach stalled again. Business owners had to get more creative by figuring out what their audience wanted, how to do transitions / effects, and somehow make this sustainable for them.
Not only was this a new way of marketing, but we saw audience behavior change. Suddenly people expected different things from Instagram and the platform’s position changed.
Rest assured that it’s not you. As a society, we’re seeing technology and world events that are changing so fast that we’re collectively changing faster than ever. The most successful small business owners not only hire help (when they can), but embrace the chaos.
This is MUCH easier to do when you follow #1 so you’re not spread thin in your marketing efforts.
5 Marketing costs money and the more money you spend, the faster your business will grow.
(Even if you think you’re not spending anything on marketing, the truth is you are. Your time is your most precious resource!)
Gone are the days of social media or SEO being “easy.” There’s more competition than ever.
The easiest way to get what you’re selling in front of the right eyes is to pay. Here’s some ways you could do this:
Invest in a designer that can make your marketing materials look professional!
Hire someone to create a social media strategy for you.
Hire a PR team to help boost your credibility.
Pay for a keyword research program and create content with that info.
And the golden ticket … pay for ads. This is the best way to make sure the right audience is seeing your content.
Have you heard of the Marketing Rule of 7?
It’s a classic theory that you need your audience to hear your message 7 times before they’ll finally commit and purchase.
With social media, this isn’t as easy as it used to be. Sure, people are seeing your posts, but how much of your audience is seeing each one? Can you know for certain that people have seen your new offer multiple times before it launches?
Showing up, paying for ads, and having a plan can all help you speed up this process to make sure that you’re getting enough eyes as a pace that works for you!
6 You don’t have to do it all at once!
It’s better to do what you can well than to do it all inconsistently and intermittently.
If your audience is on multiple platforms, pick one to start. Get a system down before you move on to the next.
If you prefer to talk to people when marketing your business, prioritize those opportunities and invest in a brochure or business card you can hand out.
If you know you need a website but can’t afford the one you envision, start smaller and work towards the larger site.
Burnout makes everything harder, so set yourself up for success by going at a pace you can sustain. That way when you’re reading to grow, you’ll have the capacity to do so.
Tired of doing it all on your own?
Westerly Creative Studio offers everything from audits & consultations to websites, decks, social media support, print collateral, and more.
We’re here to help!
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about the author
Meghan is a co-founder and lead designer of Westerly Creative Studio. With 15 years experience in her field, in addition to a BA in Graphic Design, she’s nerdy about all things color, typography, and illustration related. While her skill set spans the digital and print realms, she specializes in Squarespace websites and branding foundations.
