All businesses regularly face many obstacles and challenges. As the business owner or top level manager, you are tasked with hiring all star team players, increasing sales, making payroll, filing taxes and providing quality customer care.
And then there’s marketing!
We reached out to some connections at SurveyMonkey to get some insight into what the landscape looks like right now for the typical business.
Note: ‘Business’ is defined here as having annual recurring revenues of $1MM+ and have been in business for more than 5 years.
More than 82% of the respondents of this survey had 2-10 employees and served a mix of local and regional customers. 19% of those who participated conducted business solely as B2B, 41% on B2C, 38% targeting both.
Have Confidence in Your Online Existence
According to the survey presented, only 44% of businesses believe their online existence is serving them appropriately, which is extremely concerning..
A strong and sound online existence is critical to the success of any organization, especially when smaller in size.
If you’re the 56% that either doesn’t believe their online existence is properly serving their business or just don’t know how to tell, below are nine crucial focal points that are necessary for creating a bonafide online existence for your business:
- Content platform
- Organic SEO
- Email marketing
- Text message marketing
- Social media marketing
- Online advertising
- Local search rankings
- Review management
- Analytics and conversion management
Your business’s online existence is the major key to success no matter what you sell or serve, so make sure you’ve put in the time to get it right and understand what works and what doesn’t.
Biggest Marketing Wants and Wishlist Items
The most common marketing challenge businesses express worry for is not having enough leads, and sourcing more leads is also a resounding #1 on their wishlist. This isn’t at all surprising as we hear this all the time from our platform clients. To keep it simple, fresh leads and opportunities are the heartbeat and lifeline of every business.
With that said, there are four primary lead generation areas you and your business should consider beefing up to build authority.
Webinars
Connecting with a willing audience on topics you can provide value for is a very powerful way to create authority in your space. Webinars are an excellent tool to connect with large audiences quickly so you can demonstrate your professional knowledge in a specific area. They also allow you to build some rapport and likeability which further creates a connection to your potential prospects.
Public Speaking
Being a speaker is one of the best ways to get clients. Standing in front of a highly targeted and engaged group to demonstrate that you’re not only a likable personality but also know a lot about an interesting topic they need, is one of the most effective forms of lead generation.
Case Studies
Conclusively showing that you can get results for your target audience is powerful. Case studies open the window and allow your prospects to find some form of relatability to their current problems and situation. This is a great way to build strong brand equity and earn trust.
Joint Venture Partnerships
Often overlooked, aligning and building relationships with non-competing businesses that serve the same target market can be a lucrative source of new leads. Figuring out the “best of” providers in your market and finding ways to ethically access their client base is one of the quickest ways to flood your business with leads.
Getting new leads can be a stark challenge, but by setting up and following some guidelines it gets much simpler.
Most Immediate Marketing Needs
When a business takes a moment to ponder on what they need the most as it relates to their marketing success, there is a heavy correlation between having a clear marketing strategy and executing on effective advertising.
Effective advertising will naturally occur with a solid marketing strategy. At the very minimum, your marketing strategy should include:
- Customer avatar (a clear description of your ideal client or customer)
- Unique selling proposition aka USP or core message that differentiates your business
- Clear marketing journey for your prospects
- Effective communication tools
- Lead generation plan
- Authority based (webinars, public speaking, JV partnerships)
- Paid ads and paid marketing
- Cold outreach
- Referral focused
- Lead conversion tools
- Sales CRM
- No-negotiation sales processes
- Nurture sequences
- Online existence strategy
- Customer loyalty rewards
- Social media marketing calendar
- Definition of key performance indicators
- Short and long term customer and revenue goals
At the end of the day, keeping it simple and using the 80/20 rules (80% of your forward motion is created by 20% of your tasks) will find you the success you need.
What do you think about what we shared above? What marketing challenges do you and your business struggle with overcoming?
