Small business marketing is just as much an art as it is a science. For the next five minutes, we’re going to tell you what your competitors are doing, how your business can stand out from the crowd, and how to compete with big brands at a fraction of your budget. The first step to accomplishing this is to have your marketing “work smarter, not harder”. What does that mean? Well, let us tell you.
Your local competitors (and even most of the bigger brands) aren’t working smarter. They’re working harder. We don’t mean working harder than you are, we mean they’re making things harder for themselves. Your local competitors are marketing blindly, with no strategy and no data to back up what they’re spending valuable dollars on. They’re just doing what’s always been done, the traditional “one-size-fits-all” model. This traditional “one-size-fits-all” local marketing approach (newspaper, flyers, radio, billboards, TV) is no longer as sales effective as it used to be back in the 1980s. Yep! People in 2019 are still marketing the same way it was done in the 1980s.
Most bigger brands’ downfall is their egos. They’re saying, “We’re a huge business and that is what makes our marketing successful. It’s because we’re the biggest, have been around the longest, and have the biggest budget. That is why people buy from us and no one else”. They think they can just throw a bunch of money at everything and out-buy/compete with every other business. This is a very expensive idea that won’t get them very far.
Ultimately, both of these marketing strategies are not very smart. This brings us to the whole reason you started reading this blog post in the first place. How your business can compete in this crowded world on a fraction of the budget. You ready? Okay, here is the information you’ve been waiting for…
Your business needs to be present where consumers are making purchasing decisions (online) and your marketing needs to connect with them on an emotional level that builds trust. That’s it! This simple, yet effective, marketing approach makes your marketing budget work smarter, not harder. When someone is ready to make a purchasing decision, they go into research mode. A very large portion of their research, if not all of it, is done online.
During this process, they’re comparing the online presence of multiple businesses against one another. They’re reading reviews on Google and Facebook, going on to social media to see what people are saying about the business, watching short snippets of videos, and are looking at the content the business is posting on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Then, they narrow down their search and research further by going to the website of the business. Do you know why they’re doing this? Subconsciously, they’re looking to make an emotional connection with their purchase. And the businesses who can create this emotional connection with their digital footprint are the ones who can out-compete their local competitors and stand toe-to-toe with the big brands in town.
Since 2010, Duo Marketing Group has researched and tested the best and most cost-effective ways local businesses can create quick emotional connections with their marketing. And, because you’ve read this far and you’re dedicated to working smarter not harder, we’re going to give you our list of tips and tricks for free! Base your business’s digital marketing strategies off our list below and you’ll start growing the brand awareness and reach to increase your sales and achieve your bottom line goals.
10 Tips and tricks to work smarter not harder.
- Tap into emotion.
- Create digital content.
- Use custom research and data.
- Tell your story online.
- Be different.
- Think different.
- Be where your target market is (online).
- Create suspense and a need for your product.
- Get people talking digitally.
- After your busy season is over, keep creating and telling your story.
- Build a digital following. People love feeling included in a group.
If you’d like to know how we would market your business, give us a call at 435-264-1819or email us at [email protected].