My Own Marketing Team: blog with useful marketing tips in

Reconnecting with your social and local markets

31/7/2020

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.

As your competitors find safe footholds again by reconnecting with their social and local audiences, are you doing the same? - Write in Danderyd

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:

Take care of your current audiences first before trying to expand them
Reach out on a personal level
Reach out often - you are competing in a very busy space for the attention of people who have a lot on their minds
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?

- 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.
- 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

Online small business marketing courses from My Own Marketing Coach - Write in Danderyd

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.

What to do for your business now

3/4/2020

Are you in a position where you can't sell anything right now?

There isn't much we can say to make that feel any better but we can recommend a distraction that will set your business up to grow as life returns to normal. Now is the time to protect your brand recognition.

There have been many downturns in the world's economies and, while many businesses have plans ready for downturns, forgetting to plan for the upturn can spell disaster. We know this from studying what happens to business before, through and after recessions.

There are many cases of companies going out of business during the upturn. Surely that's something that can be avoided?

Let's put it another way:

If no-one is buying your service or product now and they aren't buying from your competitors either, then you are competitively equal. You aren't losing any more or less than they are.

If they spend the next 4-6 months building up more recognition of their services/products and you do nothing, what will happen if, in six months time, someone needs just what you offer? Will they come to you?

No.

They will have forgotten all about you and you will have lost out to your competition.

We don't recommend asking people to buy from you right not - and certainly not asking people to risk infection by doing so (grrrr....). Regularly reminding customers and potential customers about the services and product you offer is a great idea. (Even we do say so ourselves :)).

Use the same message over and over if you want to.

You want my advice? (I hope so... :))

Say the same thing 20 times. I'm challenging you to do that. Pick a service that you offer or, even better, a pain point that you clients/customers have that you help solve and put the message out to your email and social media lists 20 times over the next three months.

Do you accept the challenge?? :)

Here is one of our message versions. Get in touch with us for advice - a call is free!

Making sure Google has your address - another crucial local marketing step

27/6/2016

As Steve from Massage till dig mentioned on our recent blog post about writing local content, getting Google to recognise your correct address is a really important step in marketing your local business. You want to be found by potential customers, right?

Here is what our address looks like in Google's 'My Business' area:

Google has made it easy to add your business address - just click on business.google.com and get your business address added. You will need a Google account to do so but they are free and also easy to set up. Feel free to put a link to your address in the comments on this post!

A tip for getting local visitors to your site (like we do in Danderyd...)

22/6/2016

Did you see what we added to the title of this blog post to make it come up when someone searches online for local businesses? Yes, we wrote the word 'Danderyd'. We do that a lot. It is also in our name (if you hadn't already noticed that).

If you want to be found online as a local business, create local content.

You have two main choices here:
1. Writing about what you do in the context of your location and/or
2. Your opinion of things going on in your local area.

Whichever you choose, be sure to mention the location a couple of times at least, to let the search engines know where you are. Don't overdo it though, more than 5 could be too many and will make your post hard to read by your human readers.

MARKETING TIPS FOR THE SMALLEST OF BUSINESSES