Many businesses face the same pain around their marketing – a lack of time and money. For new mums (or dads) who are also running their own business, the pain of finding time is very real.
New business mums are expected to juggle meeting the demands of their business and their baby equally. For many, who are also suffering post-birth depletion or other health issues, including sleep deprivation, the pressure cooker starts to build. Instead of enjoying this time in your baby’s life you start to feel pulled back into your business to “carry on as usual.”
By understanding basic marketing concepts, you will find that you can effectively market your business within the time and money that you have.
Simply marketing is research, strategy, campaigns and leads.
Research
It is important to understand your customers (actual and ideal), your products and services and also your competitors. For some businesses, it is also relevant to understand other local and global issues that may affect the way that your business operates in. A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) plan should be created to show the research you have undertaken.
Strategy
Your marketing strategy should be closely aligned with your business goals, and they should direct all of your marketing-related activities. This includes sales, promotions and digital. A marketing mix will provide the big picture view of your marketing (four to seven P’s or C’s).
Campaigns
The campaigns that you create will deliver your strategy. This is where you can get creative. It is about breaking everything down into bite-size, achievable pieces – understanding that it will deliver on your marketing goals.
This is the bit that you can control and slow down if needed. Moreover, once the content is generated you can often automate many aspects of a campaign. However, note that while campaigns deliver on your strategy, they also fill up your lead funnel. By slowing down the activity in your campaigns, you will also slow down lead generation. This is important, especially if you have limited time to meet your customers’ expectations.
Leads
In general terms, this is about bringing your ideal client closer to doing business with you. Typically speaking, people need to see your brand three to nine times before they will do business with you. By attracting them into your lead funnel and encouraging them to engage with you more, you will increase the chances of them becoming a paying customer.
By spending some time and planning your marketing (research and strategy), you will be able to create campaigns that create leads, and leads that become sales. By automating your campaigns and your lead generation, you will not need to think about it, and you can also control the number of people in the process.
Not only can you be smarter with your time, you can also make smarter decisions with your money.
Rachel Allan, marketing consultant, author and mum
