Joe Glover of ‘The Marketing Meetup’ wrote about simplifying strategy this morning on LinkedIn. His post got me to thinking about some of the steps that small businesses/challenger brands and others that don’t have huge brand equity or money can use to market themselves effectively.
Here’s a list of ways that you can still market as a smaller brand.
- Define what success looks like: If you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there.
- Focus: You can’t do everything. So you need to be consistently focused on doing the one or two things you can do.
- Don’t chase “everyone”: Everyone isn’t on Facebook. Everyone isn’t doing TikTok. Everyone isn’t doing whatever it is. Focus on your business not on what “everyone” is doing.
- Have a position: For you, against your competition, somewhere in the middle. Be clear where you stand. Again, you can’t be everything and can’t do everything. What are you going to do?
- Be SMART: Meaning SMART objectives to help guide you so you know what is working and what isn’t. Smart is specific, measurable, ambition, realistic, and time bound. You’ll achieve something on this day or you won’t. The numbers won’t lie.
- Strategy before tactics: Don’t just jump to the doing. You have to know where you are going first.
- Be Consistent: Every marketing effort need to be given a chance to work. You don’t get there by jumping all over the place or by only doing something every now and then…the biggest issue many small businesses face, being consistent in their marketing efforts. Make it a part of your daily/weekly workflow.