Business Owners Toolbox Blog Discussions and articles to help the small business owner solve the challenges they face as they grow their business.

March 16, 2017

Marketing—Do I Have to Do It All Myself?

Filed under: Marketing — Tags: , , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 2:17 pm

You’re a busy business owner, you’re up to your ears in scheduling, bookkeeping, and managing people. Do you really have to handle every aspect of marketing, too? Here’s the blunt truth: No one you hire will ever care as much about your business as you do. Period. You can’t clone yourself, but you can put your time and energy where it counts. Here’s why, and how, to delegate your marketing:

Yes, You Do Have to Take the Lead in Marketing

  • It’s your company. You care the most about it.
  • You know it best.
  • You are the most motivated to sell.
  • You got into your business because you are good at marketing and selling your offering.
  • Customers want to connect with you, the owner.

No, You Don’t Have to Be a Marketing Martyr

  • It gets to the point where it’s too much for you to handle—plus do customer work.
  • Doing all the marketing tasks is not the best use of your time.
  • You may not be the best sales person in your company.
  • Parts of the marketing are easy to hand off to others.
  • You don’t have the expertise to handle all the parts.

There Are Some Things Only You Can Do:

  • Set the mission, vision, strategies, goals
  • Build strategic relationships.
  • Choose good people to help you market and sell.
  • Make sure they do what you want.
  • Approve your marketing and promotions.
  • Insist on results, not just effort.
  • Tweak your direction and offering; develop new things.

You Should Never Do Things That . . .

  • You are not good at. You can find better people to do them
  • You can easily hire and delegate to other people.
  • Get in the way of you doing what brings the greatest value to your company

Do this . . .

  1. Make a list of the Marketing tasks you’re good at, and that bring the most value.
  2. Then make a list of the tasks you’re eager to get off your plate.
  3. As you hire people – contractors and in-house, be clear about the tasks you want them to take over, and what you will continue to do.

Your Marketing Job

  • Define your pathway—your overall strategy to reach your vision.
  • Build your marketing team of skilled people who can help you execute your strategy.
  • Orchestrate your team; oversee team performance.
  • Review results, tweak, refine, and change direction when needed.

As the owner, it’s up to you to set the overall vision and define what success looks like. From there on, empower people to make it happen.

Does All This Pertain to a One-Person Business?

As a solopreneur, unless work just falls into your lap, you have to spend a good portion of your time drumming up new business. Plus doing the work. Plus all the admin stuff. How many hours a day do you want to work? (Clue: the max is 24!)

If you have a viable business, you soon discover that it’s worthwhile to hand off pieces to others: website design and maintenance, social media, copywriting, maintaining your marketing database. You notice that you depend on all these others, even though they aren’t your employees. You’re no longer a one-person business.

The option is to stay tiny and run yourself ragged.

June 29, 2009

Most bang for your marketing buck — right now!

“As a small business in the current economy, how have you modified the advertising portion of your marketing budget this year? How has it been working for your company so far this year?” (Question on LinkedIn)

Melissa,

Hopefully, nobody says, “Business is down, money is tight, so let’s cut advertising.” But you SHOULD ask, “Where do we get the most bang for our scarce marketing buck?” Then examine advertising along with your other options.

Ads or promo? Direct mail or email? Internet outreach?  Networking or public speaking? Asking for referrals? Cross-selling current customers?

And not just about advertising in general, but for each type of ad placement.

To figure this out, I would create a grid: Down the left column, write every every type of advertising, and every other marketing activity that attracts business for you. Then across the top, head columns by the most important criteria for you, such as:
– How much you’ve spent on this, in both dollars and time (Put a dollar value on an hour of your time.)
– Size of customers or sales this brings you
– Number of customers per time period
– Desirability of the customers
– Lead time till you get the customers
– Its potential to bring you more in the long run
– (add your own)

Then rate each marketing activity by each criterion. Add up the totals and see what gets high and low scores. This is an eye-opening exercise.

This approach is over-simplified. It ignores interactions among types of marketing, and ignores strategic marketing with a long lead time. But it gives enlightening answers to the question, “What marketing gives me the shortest route to cash flow now?”

August 14, 2008

My Top 10 Rules for Small Business Marketing

Q: What are the marketing needs for the average small business? Do you consider working with marketing consultants and, if so, what would you go to one for? 

I’m looking to get thoughts from those who are in/ run a small business (i.e., sole-proprietorship to a place with fewer than 20 employees)

 (Linked In posting, Aug 14, 08)

A: My Top 10 rules for Small Business Marketing? At least some good guidelines:

First, you asked about the marketing needs of the “average small business.” There’s no “average business.” Very different marketing/selling needs for a retailer, personal services, business services, and manufacturer/distributor.

• Marketing is essential, and it is expensive. You know what they say about owning a yacht? “It’s a hole in the water you throw money into.” Marketing can be the same way.

For a small company on a shoestring budget, the question is, how can you get the most from every marketing dollar you spend? And for every hour you spend on marketing and selling?

• Separate marketing and selling in your thinking. People who lump selling in with marketing often have lousy sales.

• Do you have more time, or more money? For the shoestringers, it’s time. So you need a time-centered marketing strategy.

• But then you must balance bringing in the work with doing the work. This leads to the eternal entrepreneur’s dilemma: You get a project; you stop marketing. The project ends; you have no work because you stopped marketing.

• Look at your marketing/selling at 3 different levels, and have a plan and budget for each:

1. Shortest route to cash flow. What sales can you bring in within 30 days?

2. Business development. How can you cultivate relationships that turn into sales within, say, 6 months?

3. Strategic development. How can you take advantage of big opportunities over the next 2 years or so?

• The “Goldilocks principle.” What size jobs/customers are just right for you?

1. Boulders. Big, lots of competition (thus lower margin), dominates your time if you get it, devastating if you lose it. They may view you as a contract employee.

2. Rocks. Solid, profitable, appreciative, no single job is more than 20% of your revenue

3. Pebbles. Tiny. Takes as much time to get as a larger job, low margin, demanding, slow pay

Aim your marketing at your “rocks.” If other good ones fall into your lap, take them.

• What works for you? Do more of what works, and stop doing the rest. To find out: List everything you already do (or might do) for marketing. For each one, estimate

…How much time you spend on it (per month, say)

…How much money you spend on it, per month

…What results you’ve produced so far: number of customers, size of jobs, type of work, desirability of prospects, etc.

…Lead time, sales cycle. How long does it take to pay off?

Ideally, you’d like to compare this ratio for each:

         Gross profit from the sales produced, divided by . . .

         Marketing/selling cost (including time)

When I do this for myself (I sell small business services) here’s what I learn:

…DOESN’T PAY OFF. Networking groups (wrong kind of prospects), display ads, yellow pages, PR campaigns, direct mailings or cold call campaigns

…PAYS OFF. Referrals from clients (remember to ask for them!), mutual referral sources, public speaking, writing books, writing articles (like this one), getting interviewed, professional organizations

…SHOULD PAY OFF BETTER. Website (search engine optimization)

Your list may be exactly the opposite of this.

• Get your face out there. Esp. for service businesses, people buy you. “80% of selling is just showing up!”

• Stick to it. The other 80% of selling is consistency and follow up. Have a regimen for marketing and selling, and get a coach to help you stay on it. Your coach is your de facto sales manager.

• Get needed help. Are you a great marketer/seller? Then hire someone to do the work for you. Are you best at doing the work? Then hire a marketer AND a sales person. (Rarely are these two skills combined in one head.)

Should you hire a consultant? For a shoestringer, be wary! Remember the yacht!

…Hire specific expertise: web designer, graphic designer, copywriter.

…Hiring someone to do a marketing plan for you is a waste of money. Find a FREE marketing advisor, e.g., through SCORE or your local Small Business Development Center. I could email you a page of questions, and if you answer them, you have a marketing plan.

…Hire someone to sell for you, and pay them mainly on results ($$$$) produced. Good sales people are rare and expensive. Ask one: “I’d like to pay you obscene amounts of money. How much is that for you? Now give me a plan of how you’re going to produce it.”

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