Optimizing your marketing dollars on a small business budget

Effective small business marketing should not require a large budget. It starts with an honest approach. Ensure your customer-facing assets are accurately and beautifully presenting the value propositions for what you want your business to be known. Spend time learning about your customers. You should not be seeking out how you grasp every possible dollar from them – you should understand how you can deliver more of what they want.

Branded use of social media is built around people opting-in to receiving your marketing messages. That is why it is so vitally important to get social right. If you want to grow your business and customer loyalty, you have to deliver content to them that is enticing, encourages engagement, and is too good to opt out of. Beautiful imagery, persuasive copy, timely messaging. Center it on your value props – your product, your services, your space, your community. Understand the balance of delivering these messages and the role your brand plays in your customer’s lives. Do you need to be everywhere all the time? Be diligent about managing your digital reputation. Be proud of every bit of content you make public or don’t put it out there at all. Content for the sake of content leads to a diluted brand message, a lazy reputation and pumps more static into the internet’s noise. That is when customers start ignoring or opting out of your communication.

Don’t do more, do differently. Why? Because there is a high supply of noise, and a low amount of empathy when it comes to the digital space.

Give sincere support to local businesses and develop partnerships with your community. All floods raise ships. Incorporate support of those companies across social media into your marketing mix. Working together and “scratching each other’s backs” doesn’t cost you anything (besides your time). That trade of support serves to strengthen those relationships and introduces your audiences (and potentially new customers) to each other. My mentality is that I genuinely desire to have all of our partners succeed, and have a little fun along the way. When you begin with that as a contrite goal, the attitude becomes contagious for your partners and customers.