Tons of small businesses neglect their marketing. They know they should do it but more pressing issues keep them from getting to it. No surprise that
- The last company blog was months ago, the customer newsletter is late or never goes out at all,
- The company’s signage and customer experience looks tired,
- Customers looking online for what the business offers don’t see it appearing at or near the top of search hits,
- Leads don’t come to you, you have to go out and get them,
- Sales aren’t growing as they should be…
It’s tough keeping up your marketing when there are more pressing things to deal with in the business. Marketing is one of those things that is easy to put off but over time it catches up with you.
Marketing is about focusing on understanding the marketplace, the competition, and the customers’ desires and pain points.
Typically, marketing is about:
- The future and deciding where to go next
- Concentrating on differentiation and offerings that are unique enough to give your business a long term competitive advantage
- Working on
- growing brand awareness,
- attracting prospects and
- moving people into the sales funnel
Marketing is characterized by:
- Research
- Mapping strategy
- Analyzing data
- Developing performance measures
- Setting up systems
- Watching trends
- Changing tactics as required
- Developing and leveraging marketing assets
- Thinking about long term objectives
Sales is not the same as marketing. They require quite different kinds of people. What makes for a good sales professional contradicts with what makes for a great marketing professional.
Sales professionals are driven by:
- The short term
- Converting the lead in front of them into a sale, and then moving on as quickly as possible
- Looking for and closing the deal
Having access to a Virtual Marketing Manager can be a big benefit for a small business.
Most can’t afford an experienced, knowledgeable Marketing Manager on a full-time basis and may never consider hiring one.
That’s a problem because many small businesses fail within the first three years.
Reasons include
- Failure to set themselves apart from the competition
- Inability to find a profitable business model
- Ineffectively building awareness amongst potential customers
- Not maintaining customer service standards
A Virtual Marketing Manager is an affordable alternative to hiring a full-time Marketing Manager and can make a big difference to a small business by:
- Helping to clearly define the key benefit that sets a business apart
- Exploiting this key benefit through the company’s communications
- Ensuring that the company is regularly communicating with its important audiences
- Building inbound sales leads through its websites and other marketing assets
- Ensuring marketing investments are achieving tangible returns
The nature of SMB marketing means that you probably don’t need a full-time marketing manager.
A virtual marketing manager lets you get the benefits of a senior marketing manager without having to establish a full-time position.
A good virtual marketing manager can let the business owner carry on with running the business without distraction while building demand for its products and services.
