It’s no secret that small businesses encounter a slew of difficulties. If you have ever launched your own company, you’ve likely heard plenty “I could never do that” comments from friends and relatives – and they might be correct! According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 20% of small businesses in the United States fail within the first year. Small businesses have significant marketing problems. You, however, have obviously shown that you’re up for the job, so let’s look at some common marketing challenges for small businesses and how to overcome them.
Of course, the most significant obstacle to most small companies expanding or simply beginning marketing is a lack of resources. Because the company must function, operations precede all firms’ marketing. It’s a terrible catch-22: to acquire sales, you must promote, yet to market, you must have fewer sales to allow for more bandwidth.
Let’s examine how this loop harms your bottom line and how you might break free.
Marketing Challenges for Small Businesses
1. A Scarce Marketing Budget
This is a major challenge for small businesses. Budget limits are a concern in every aspect of running a small company. The most common error business owners make is not allocating a specific budget for marketing. You’ll read many articles about how marketing in the modern era is “free,” which leads businesses to believe that they should be able to obtain a lot of clients for the low price of $0.
Unfortunately, nothing in life is free, particularly marketing. Even if you don’t intend to spend money on advertising, time is money, and marketing takes time. Whether you handle the marketing yourself or hire someone to do it on top of their other obligations, someone needs to spend less time on other aspects of the company for marketing to happen. Make a budget for the time that someone will be spending.
2. Compact Marketing Groups
Even if you have a tiny and scrappy crew that can wear several hats, there are only so many hours in a day. With an unbelievable amount of marketing approaches in front of you, on top of day-to-day company operations, attempting to accomplish it all with little resources may leave business owners disillusioned and disappointed with the outcomes.
Marketing is ineffective when viewed as a side project; thus, outsourcing certain duties may be the missing element to begin converting brand recognition into sales. Until you are able to recruit, utilize independent contractors and freelancers. These individuals might be hired on a temporary or project basis to assist speed things ahead.
3. Attempting to do Everything Yourself
We utilize many of the same channels for personal reasons that corporations use for marketing, especially in the digital era. This is a significant advantage for company owners since you can still learn how to utilize the platforms even if you’re not a social media whiz. But don’t be fooled into believing it’s that easy!
Social media marketers use audience-building strategies to construct campaigns that convert, try to enhance engagement rates, and monitor top-performing content. To guarantee that efforts result in sales, email marketers analyze content, understand email privacy standards, and monitor site traffic. These are only a few components of the marketing puzzle; even an experienced marketer will struggle to execute it alone. Maintaining a marketing presence is vital, but understanding how to outsource personnel will lead to development.
4. Unreliable or Sporadic Marketing Efforts
Inadequate marketing might result from a lack of a committed marketing person. When teams have the time, they seize the opportunity, but marketing must take a back seat when another priority arises. This may not seem to be a significant deal for a company, but it is for a consumer.
Building brand trust with consumers requires consistency. Prospects will find it difficult to recall or trust you if they get emails at irregular intervals, do not see fresh postings after following on social media, or never see the brand name again. To prevent this, create a promotional schedule ahead of time or consider using marketing automation to cover the gap when time is limited.
5. Limited Content Availability
When it comes to tactics, inbound marketing reigns supreme. Depending on your aims, this implies that you’ll need a material that your consumers will find useful, helpful, or interesting. Inbound marketing is based on disseminating information that attracts your ideal consumers to your company.
Articles, blog entries, photographs, videos, and even webinars may all be considered content. However, if you’re not in the content creation industry, this is the most difficult barrier to overcome for most small firms. If writing isn’t your strong point, consider hiring a content strategist who can put out a comprehensive strategy for the quarter or perhaps the year. These components may then be outsourced or handled internally.
6. Keeping Current with Marketing Trends
When you just have a limited amount of time to devote to marketing initiatives, forget about keeping on top of trends! New technologies emerge on a regular basis, particularly in the digital arena. While it’s not worth tracking every trend, some are game-changers that completely reshape the landscape. For example, early adopters of marketing automation are now in a better position to deliver customized client journeys while others strive to catch up.
This is true not just for digital marketing but also for conventional marketing strategies. Are you up to speed on mailer best practices? Do you know how much it costs to sponsor an event on average? Time restrictions will make it tough to stay up, so check with an expert or do research before doing anything.
7. Finding the Right People
Small business owners and employees wear several hats. It is not unusual for the back office manager to also manage the Facebook page or for the customer service representative to oversee the Instagram account. While this may be necessary for the near term, it will not help the firm expand. Consider this. Would you not employ someone to assist customers, package items, and be the lead baker if you owned a bakery?
Giving crucial marketing tasks to someone with little to no marketing expertise will provide the same outcomes. To expand, you will need to hire marketing professionals. But how are you meant to know how to recruit a marketing expert if you aren’t one? If you’re not recruiting via a trusted freelancing hub, be sure to evaluate any candidates’ web presence and offer a basic test they can take to demonstrate their talents.
8. Seeing Consistent Results
When there isn’t enough time in the day to fit in any marketing, there isn’t much time to report on and optimize those efforts. Entrepreneurs often abandon marketing due to a perceived lack of results.
Most marketing methods, however, need time, know-how, and setup to demonstrate immediate ROI. Many organizations suffer because they are unable to effectively link marketing initiatives to sales, and marketing is once again pushed to the back burner.
Investing in a marketing person or freelancer to assist with tracking and optimizing efforts so that conversions can be seen is not only the best way to begin seeing results from the investment, but it is also a way to put your mind at ease that the marketing engine is running and customers are coming in.
Important Takeaways
Small businesses will always have resource limits, but keep in mind that all large corporations began small. If you want to develop, the first step is to think about how you can invest in marketing.
Consider the following:
- You can’t do it all on your own! Learning to outsource and rely on reputable marketing pros can help you get results much quicker.
- Marketing becomes more sophisticated and time-consuming as you develop. Begin by recruiting individuals who understand how to demonstrate a return on investment.
- Investigate techniques and technology to assist in offloading the requirement for additional personnel. Marketing automation is assisting many small firms in removing certain manual chores to save time.
You’ll be ready to shatter those income targets with a fresh marketing attitude!
Featured Image- Megapixl @ Stevanovicigor
Author Okoro Chinedu 