Marketing Your Small Business with Precision and Intention
For the sake of this article, I'm going to make some assumptions. I assume you don't have a million-dollar monthly ad budget. I assume you have a product or service that has sustained, and hopefully grown, your business over the course of a few years.
When digital marketing first came onto the scene for small business owners, there were genuinely effective tricks and hacks that the marketing gurus would uncover. For a fee, you may have enrolled in a newsletter, attended events, or been a part of masterminds that shared those shortcuts with you.
However, as the social media companies improved and matured their platforms, they worked tirelessly to eliminate as many of those "shortcuts" as possible from their system. While there are certainly marketing best practices that are still in play, many of the old hacks have gone by the wayside.
With the cost of marketing perpetually increasing over time, business owners have been forced to become intentional and surgical with every single marketing dollar to maintain a positive Return on Investment (ROI).
The Reality of Marketing Expectations
The legendary P.T. Barnum was famously quoted as saying: "I am certain that half of my marketing money is completely wasted. The problem, I do not know which half." Anyone who has been in the marketing game knows it is a trial-and-error game.
On average, 90% of every marketing budget spent is a failure. When you find the 10% that produces, you double, triple, or quadruple down on that channel and campaign until it dries up. You are constantly testing, and constantly failing, 90% of the time, in the search for the next campaign that demonstrates success. It's the nature of the beast.
Since you are mathematically guaranteed to fail nine out of ten times, precision and intention are no longer optional—they are mandatory. To be effective, you must first master the fundamentals: clearly identify your dream client, articulate your unique value, and craft an offer so irresistible that your 10% success rate delivers truly massive returns.
With client acquisition costs continuing to climb, it is imperative that we move from tactic-only (hacks) to sound marketing strategy. Here is what I mean:
First, you need to develop and refine your unique selling proposition. This helps you to stand out in the market and effectively communicate why your product or service is more expensive than the competition.
Secondly, you need to ensure that your profitability numbers are accurate and regularly updated. You should strive to, at minimum, break even on your first sale, with a quick upsell or back-end sale that generates significant profit for your company.
Then, you need to identify your best customers, creating a profile with as much detail as possible. This includes (but is not limited to) demographic, psychographic, financial info, hobbies, interest, and the way they communicate (emotionally) about the problem you solve and the solution you offer.
You must clearly convey the emotional problem you are solving for your ideal customer, and the cost of inaction. You must also structure your upsell/back-end sales as a natural progression of the initial problem you are solving.
Now, you must build your campaign in whatever channel you prefer with compelling marketing copy and a clear next step for the prospective customer. Oh, and as you are testing, you need to do the same with other marketing channels to ensure you are minimizing the sales risk of your "golden goose" changing algorithms and watering down results/starving cash flow.
You should strive for healthy margins because most business owners do not account for 100% of the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), Client Acquisition Cost (CAC), and your cash conversion cycle.
This is a lot of work. Most marketing agencies and founders do not incorporate this level of detail into their marketing plans. As costs continue to climb for business owners, we must become more intentional with our marketing budget and efforts. Focusing on hacks and tactics alone is a thing of the past that will continue to waste a tremendous amount of time and money. Now you need a sound marketing strategy and pricing strategy, in addition to the required tactics to gain attention.
Sorting through all of the steps on your own is certainly doable. The trick is consistency in testing and marketing. If you would like to shortcut the process and have a team who has been working in this area for over four decades, check out my exclusive offer.
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