Marketing strategies are intimidating and overwhelming the first time you approach them. For small business owners, marketing can fall into the too-hard basket, leading to responsibility being handed over to a staff member or outsourced to an agency. But if you’re a new business or have limited resources, youโve got no choice but to tackle a strategy yourself. This is where the basics, foundational knowledge of marketing, can help pay off and help small businesses create an effective marketing strategy.
Letโs look at creating a basic SME marketing strategy to build off of.
Marketing basics for small businesses
No matter what stage a business is in, the basics of marketing are crucial to understand when developing a plan or campaign.
What is a marketing strategy?
Running ads on Facebook or advertising on billboards is not a marketing strategy. Those are part of executing your marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is your overall plan for:
- Reaching new customers
- Communicating your unique selling point
- Maintaining your business brand (or create and grow!)
To those ends, you look at your products (what you sell), prices (how much), people (customers and staff involved), promotion (visibility), placement (where to buy), and process (how to sell).
B2B vs B2C
Very important to distinguish who you’re selling to. B2B is selling to businesses; you are offering services they need to operate (infrastructure) or operate more effectively (productivity). B2C is for everyday people, and there is a wide range of businesses offering different goods and services. Whoever you’re selling to has very different motivations and needs when buying.
Consider a supermarket selling food to a customer, and a wholesaler selling food to a restaurant. Both businesses sell food, yet have wildly different marketing strategies to reach their customers.
What is positioning?
What your customers see when interacting with your brand. How you want to be perceived or how you are seen. For instance:
Martyโs cafe is your morning one-stop shop for breakfast and coffee. A crowd favourite serving breakfast and lunch to locals, and slinging B & Eโs for tradies on the run.
For Martyโs Cafe, locals see it as the place to grab coffee or have breakfast, either sit down or on the run, reliable. Positioning is what your customer recognises you as in the market.
Unique selling point
Your unique selling point or proposition (USP) is how you distinguish yourself from others. Thatโs it. Businesses separate themselves from competitors either by hitting on price, quality, convenience, reputation, or niche. It can be a combination of these. For instance, if we look at Martyโs Cafe, reputation and convenience are the businessโs USP.
Marty’s cafe is your morning one-stop shop for breakfast and coffee. A crowd favourite serving breakfast and lunch to locals, and slinging B&E’s for tradies on the run.
- Convenience
- Reputation
Channels vs campaign
Facebook, Google Ads, Instagram, and so forth are outreach channels you can use for your marketing campaign. For instance, Instagram is a social media channel you can market on, as people interact through short videos. For your campaign, you may promote a product with a reel (short video) and boost it on the platform by paying a fee for more visibility. Your campaign is an ongoing process; boosting a reel on Instagram is part of it. Channel = platform, campaign = process.
Your small business strategy handbook
With the basics covered, you can begin to formulate your marketing strategy. However, it can be difficult to know where to start. To that end, try using our marketing strategy action card to create a basic marketing strategy:
Choosing your marketing channels
Not every marketing channel will work for every business. Product-based businesses tend to gravitate toward popular social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok because they let you interact naturally with everyday people, whereas B2B businesses tend to lean heavily toward more formal channels like LinkedIn and Google Ads. LinkedIn is purely for working professionals and business interactions, while Google Ads are deployed across many platforms and target places where business owners get information, like news outlets.
It will take some research and practice to understand whichever channel you choose, but if you’re starting from scratch, a good place to start is creating a Google Business Profile. This is a basic business profile that gives you an identity and helps customers find and contact you (which can be especially great for local businesses). Add this to your to-do list if you donโt already have a profile.
The effort involved in every marketing channel
It takes effort to get a marketing campaign off the ground. When selecting a channel, pick 1-3 and do them well. Carve out a portion of your time each week and consistently work on those channels to build it into something that pays off for your business.
For instance, if you’re creating a referral system for your business, it will be slow going until referred customers start trickling in, then itโll snowball as word of mouth spreads. This is when a customer base becomes a network. Patience and consistency are key here, as the work you put into the beginning of your strategy will determine the return on your investment.
Social media caveat
Social media, especially Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, are powerful tools that can help you reach a wider audience. However, returns are heavily dependent on your understanding of the platform and its dedicated algorithm. Content that does well on Instagram might crash and burn on TikTok, so post wisely.
The key to successful social media marketing is tailoring your content to the platform โ i.e. the people who use it โ and publishing new content consistently, with intention. One good video per week is better than five shoddy ones. Content planning is a must, so start by making a posting schedule and style guide thatโs sustainable for you.
Committing to a budget
Marketing requires spending, but how you spend is more important than how much you spend. Finding the right marketing budget will require some trial and error, so see what works at the lowest cost and refine over time.
Small business budget range
For small businesses, the average marketing budget is between 3% and 5% of revenue. A growing business might be more aggressive at 8-12%. But if revenue is sporadic or unpredictable, it may be better to set weekly or monthly spending limits. Whatever you choose, donโt deviate unless the spending is justified.
Paid Channels
Paid channels need a dedicated budget line item โ otherwise, costs can easily spiral out of control. Typically, small businesses spend between $1500 and $3000 per month on ads. It takes time to optimise your campaigns, since youโre paying the algorithm to discover what works and what doesnโt. Consider this your learning spend until you settle on the right budget and strategy for your business.
Free channels
Free channels can be tempting, but they can also be a considerable time sink. Say, for instance, you want to build an audience organically on Facebook (i.e. without paying to promote/boost posts). This still means you need to come up with ideas, create content, and post consistently to reach an audience โ and hope your content is good enough to compete in the algorithm. If it isnโt, the algorithm will stop showing it to new customers and prioritise paying companies instead.
If social media is too much work for now, start with referral programs. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools since people are more likely to trust each other than your ads. Plus, customer reviews are a great way to showcase your business and generate hype. To start, consider creating a customer referral program and building your reputation by encouraging customers to leave reviews.
Email marketing programs can also be a great marketing tool because they help you build an audience of loyal customers (who arenโt subject to social media algorithms). Email programs can have steep upfront costs and effort, but once built, they are easy to automate at low cost and can deliver great results with a dedicated customer base.
Starting your small business strategy
The ideal marketing strategy for your small business should do a few things well: use the most effective channel for your business and industry, spend its budget wisely, and invest in sustainable growth over quick results. Itโs better to have a plan than no plan, so think of it as a first draft to refine over time. Once youโve got a working strategy, youโve got a great starting point for you or a marketing specialist to build upon.
