Reconnecting with your social and local markets

As the real world changes, the online world does too. More than half the entire world population uses social media and its use increased as people started to get stuck at home.

This poses a dilemma for small business owners. 

On the one hand, not 'wasting' money on marketing while businesses are closed, sales can't happen and income is so uncertain seems sensible. On the other hand, others see the value in remaining visible and protecting future sales. 

There are also those who have, in a positive way, taken advantage of the crisis to reach out to their target market and ask for their support through this period.

Market forces usually keep the playing field somewhat level and that's been true in the healthy economic climate we have benefited from for years, up to January this year. Now it has now been shaken to pieces.

While saving money is sensible in a down period, being invisible isn't. Companies that best survive in recessions are those that market through it and therefore get sales as soon as recovery starts. It can be fatal for a company to ignore the competition's activities and lose their market share.

If you have been busy surviving and marketing has had to take a back seat (or been left behind), here are some things to think about:

1. Take care of your current audiences first before trying to expand them
2. Reach out on a personal level   
3. Reach out often - you are competing in a very busy space for the attention of people who have a lot on their minds
4. It is difficult to 'over-' post on social media. 20 posts a day won't bother your audience because they won't see 90% of them. That doesn't mean you should spend all your time posting but it does mean you shouldn't worry about posting too often. Especially at the moment.

A client case in point 

A client of ours had all their staff completely booked up with appointments for months through to the end of February. March came and all bookings were cancelled. No-one came into the store. 

The owner of the business did several things that meant that, by May, bookings were almost back up to February levels and people popped in to the store specifically to buy 'something'. 

How?

1. - The store landlord did not provide rent relief that the government had made available. This client rallied local businesses and got local press to cover the story. When that didn't work, they took it to the main national newspapers. A large feature about the company's plight appeared and the client started getting bookings and customers from both existing customers and a slightly different target market - those that had read the article in the broadsheet financial press.
   
2. - A simple SMS to around 800 customers was sent. The message - 'If you want us to be here when this is all over, you need to buy something from us now, even something very small'. It worked. People came in and bought many of the smaller items on the shelves.  

While both of these things were designed to help the business survive the spring, they also made the company really visible and that has been worth its weight in gold!

There are various cost-effective areas you can use to reach out to your target market:

If this feels overwhelming or you don't have time to do this yourself, reach out to us. We have two ways that we can help you:

• You can learn all about marketing your small business by taking any of our online courses. More details about them can be found at www.myownmarketingcoach.com 
  

• We can run any of the above campaigns or manage any aspect of your marketing for you. Here are some examples of campaigns we run for the smallest of businesses:
  

A garden services client of ours also sells Christmas trees. We run a social media marketing campaign for them each November and December, building up awareness and sales of the trees and helping fuel bookings coming in at the end of the winter. 

A customer-facing client of ours just doesn't have time to manage their Instagram and Facebook accounts so we manage them for them - taking around four hours per month to do so. It keeps them visible, gets out important messages about opening times, delivers information about new product lines and special offers and it works to bring in customers.

We manage bigger projects for small businesses too. We run the global marketing for a hospitality business, including building, managing and content marketing on two separate websites in five languages, email marketing, their social media portals in five languages and partner management too. We have grown what we do for them as we have helped them to grow!

Our graphic designers have produced local and social marketing materials for our clients, including flyer campaigns and the occasional sign. 

Whatever size and type of business you have, if you need help marketing it and want to grow your sales, get in touch with us.