If you’re a small business feeling the pinch on your cashflow right now, it might be tempting to cut your marketing budget to reduce your monthly expenses.
But if the pandemic has taught us anything (other than how to adjust the filters on Zoom), surely it’s that maintaining marketing in the face of uncertainty is the secret to long-term success.
Press pause, but don’t panic
Now is a good time to press pause (briefly) on everything you’re doing, without going into panic mode. Step back and take a big-picture view of your marketing efforts.
Now is the time to consider:
- What are our business goals?
- Who are our ideal customers?
- What do they really need from us?
- Where are we getting the best ROI from our marketing efforts?
- What could we be doing differently?
Doing an audit of your current marketing activity will give you a snapshot of what’s working best for you, and which activities are perhaps a “nice to have” rather than a necessity.
Get strategic
When most small businesses think about marketing, they’re focused on tactics. Activities like social media posts, website updates, Google ads and email campaigns.
Strategic marketing is about taking an objective look at how these tactics align with your business, and questioning where your time, money and efforts are best spent.
It’s as much about what not to do, as it is about what to do, so that your marketing efforts are truly aligned with your business goals, and therefore have the biggest potential impact. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, awareness or leads, the right strategic marketing approach can help.
Talk to your customers
Take a deep dive into your customers and their behaviours and pain points. Are you showing up in the right places to reach them? Are you adjusting your message to meet their needs and pain points? There’s nothing worse than a tone-deaf business that completely misunderstands its customers in tough times.
Ask your customers for feedback, and actively engage with them for up-to-date insights. Strategic marketing can help you finesse your message, and focus on the problems your customers need solving right now (which might be very different to the problems they had a year ago).
Make every dollar count
Even if you’ve ring-fenced your marketing budget, strategic marketing means making sure your money is working harder for you.
There are plenty of shiny marketing tactics and trends out there, but in reality, you might be better off spending your marketing dollars on trade shows or an upgrade to your CRM system. Less sexy than social media campaigns, but potentially more effective.
Expert advice
If marketing has been managed by a junior team member, or you’re a founder who’s been the driver of your small business’s marketing efforts, then you’re probably too close to your business to have a true perspective on your marketing strategy.
This is where external strategic marketing advice can come in handy. An experienced marketing manager can help create a data-driven marketing strategy that meets the current and future needs of your business. They can ask hard questions, offer new perspectives and provide concrete, well-informed ideas for how your business can make its marketing work even harder.
The good news is you don’t need to hire a full-time employee or go through the whole recruitment process, you can outsource your marketing manager role for a set number of months, without the commitment of a permanent employee. It means strategic input, on a small business budget.
With this in mind, you can get your strategic marketing on track, so that your marketing efforts help your business weather the storm. Because now’s the time to make your marketing work smarter, not harder.
