Growing Your Business: Marketing
Often one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight, Marcus Steffen, Founder of Akarui, discusses how integral the role of marketing is to growing your business.
Marketing is one of those great mysteries. Trillions are spent every year on it, but understanding what it is and how to do it well is a challenge. I will start with the caveat that I am not an expert on marketing, but I have had to try and learn to grow my business, as all small business owners do. I hope that by sharing my experiences, it helps others as they try to plan their marketing strategies.
Marketing has evolved over the last few decades. It used to be that a simple advert, either on TV or in a newspaper, would bring in work. As the media world has fragmented, this has become far more complex, and so more work needs to be put into how to reach those who could use your services. In addition to this, clients now have access to endless information online, which they have become very good at analysing before you ever speak to them. Due to this, there is huge blurring of lines between marketing and sales. Many clients will do heavy independent research before they make contact. Once they have identified your company as someone they might want to use, they look at around 20 pieces of information before they reach out to you. These can be pages on a website, social media posts, print media and others. The content used within your marketing is also doing your sales work for you, which can be both a benefit and a curse.
To take control of this marketing, structure is needed to ensure the messaging is correct, and also building a customer journey to the point they want you to help with their projects. This is where a marketing plan becomes essential. Without this, everything else falls apart. When looking at bigger industries, even the most spontaneous, unedited social media posts are most likely part of a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign. Having a marketing plan also helps relieve some of the pressure to constantly be trying to think of what to do next. You can dedicate focused time to building a marketing plan, with all the creative energy that goes into that, and then focus on delivery afterwards.
Marketing Strategies
One of the key principles of marketing (and sales, because of the merging of the two) is having a range of marketing strategies. If you rely on one way of getting new business (e.g. referrals) then if something affects that, it means your new business goes to zero. Having a range of different marketing strategies builds in resilience to your plan, and ensures a more steady and flexible flow of work. It also allows you to grow the business faster. Improving five different strategies by 5% is far easier than improving one by 25%.
A general rule of thumb is a minimum of three marketing strategies. These can be anything, and does not need to be something you need to pay for. Here are some examples:
• Referrals
• Previous Clients
• Social Media Posts (LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, etc)
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (GoogleAds, Instagram)
• Magazine Adverts
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• Your Website
• Published articles
• Videos (YouTube, etc)
• CPDs (Continual Professional Development sessions)
• Networking
There are lots of options available, and weaving these into your marketing strategies will provide more business. Many of these do not cost money if you are willing to put your own time in (remember to analyse the cost/benefit of spending your own time on this rather than hiring someone else). But how do you plan for these?
Making a Marketing Plan
Marketing plans are all about getting more business. As such, each strategy should have measurable targets that they need to achieve. Some are easy to measure. Money spent on an advert should produce a certain number of leads, of which a percentage are converted into work. You might have to try a strategy and spend some money to understand what these figures are, but from then on, they should be measured. Others are more difficult to measure. For example, meeting new people from networking is not a target. Attending four events a month, resulting in six new contacts, would be a target.
Next, you need to think about what you are going to use in your marketing strategies, the dreaded word: content. Building content is a massively complex task, and hundreds of books and online guides exist. I would rather make a few key points to guide you on what you might like to consider. This can be applied to typical content (an article or a post on social media) but also not so logical content (e.g. what you talk about when networking).
It’s not about lighting design
Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt said “people don’t want to buy a ¼” drill bit. They want a ¼” hole.” Seth Godin (marketing guru) took this further in his book This Is Marketing, and said people don’t want a ¼” hole, they want to mount shelves. But they don’t want to mount shelves, they want to tidy up the last remaining boxes from the move they made six months ago, so they can relax in their new home. They want the space to feel clean and tidy. They want the satisfaction of a job well done. They want the admiration of their partner.
People don’t want lighting design. They want something else, but a lighting design is a requirement to deliver that. Whether it is a safe street, an amazing experience in a restaurant, a cozy home to relax in or a productive space to work, clients have desires and fears. Understanding these is essential, since then you can show, through your content, how you can give them this.
Understand your client’s motivations
Who you are targeting with your marketing can have a large impact on the message you want to send. When you want to appeal to a client, you want to understand their motivations for using your service or product. The client might want a beautiful building at the end, but an interior designer might value technical support and reassurance. A project manager might value efficiency and consistent delivery of work on time more than anything else.
Budget
Marketing needs a budget to work. There are many cost-effective methods of marketing that don’t require huge budgets, but there is always a cost. This could be your personal time (and you need to put a value on that time) or paying others to do the marketing. Then there is the investment in whatever marketing strategies you are using, whether it is Pay-per-click, adverts in a magazine or entertainment for clients. Often the first thing a company cuts when needing to make savings is the marketing budget, but this is extremely short sighted. Any investment in marketing should be giving a return on investment, and it is a numbers game. Tracking the spend on each strategy and how much business this is bringing in is essential. This is why having measurable targets for strategies is so important. It is also important to factor in the time the strategy will take to implement. PPC marketing is quick, and should be generating income in a short time. On the opposite, networking and hosting events can take over a year to bear fruit. In either case, regular assessments of the ROI is important, with a view to refine and improve those numbers over time.
As I said at the start, I am not a guru of marketing, but I do feel that without a marketing strategy, no business is going to survive. We are all amazing, creative designers, but attracting new clients requires more than that. Making a plan that is beyond relying on referral is essential for the unknown future.
Book Recommendation: This Is Marketing by Seth Godin
