5 Effective Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners in 2024

Summary

This video provides five key marketing strategies to help small businesses attract more clients and grow. Drawing from 10 years of experience, the speaker emphasizes the importance of focusing on strategic over tactical marketing, avoiding selfish marketing, balancing value with offers, avoiding premature marketing, and aligning your market, message, and media. By steering clear of common mistakes, such as asymmetrical or mismatched marketing, businesses can create more effective campaigns, build strong client relationships, and ensure long-term success. The video is packed with actionable insights for sustainable business growth.

Takeaways

• 💡 Focus on strategic marketing instead of tactical marketing. Strategic marketing aligns with business goals, while tactical marketing often involves short-term tricks that don't yield long-term results.
• 🧠 Avoid selfish marketing. Instead, make your marketing client-focused by addressing their needs, pains, and goals rather than just talking about your products or services.
• ⚖️ Strive for a balance between value and sales in your marketing. Excessive free content without offers leads to missed sales, while constant sales pitches can lead to audience burnout.
• ⏱️ Don’t engage in premature marketing. Carefully time your marketing to ensure you’re reaching people when they’re ready to buy, rather than overwhelming them with offers too soon.
• 🎯 Tailor your marketing to avoid mismatched messaging. Align your market, message, and media to ensure you’re delivering the right content to the right people through the right channels.
• 🤝 Foster relationships through empathetic marketing. Understand your customers’ problems and use your content to position your business as the ideal solution.
• 📊 Prioritize deeper, strategic questions over surface-level ones. For example, focus on which platforms suit your business rather than just the best times to post on social media.
• 🗣️ Use ‘you’ language to keep your content client-centered. This makes it more engaging and relevant by directly addressing the reader's interests and needs.
• 🔄 Balance content that adds value with strategically placed offers. This approach helps nurture relationships with potential clients over time, leading to sales when they are ready to buy.
• 👥 Define your ideal customer avatar to better target your market. Understand their demographics, needs, and desires to create marketing that resonates with them.

Q & A

What is the main goal of the video?

The main goal of the video is to provide five top marketing strategies to help business owners attract more clients and grow their business by creating better, more effective marketing.

Why is marketing considered crucial for business success?

Marketing is crucial because it helps bring in new leads, clients, customers, and sales. Without effective marketing, businesses can't grow and may end up being just an expensive hobby.

What is 'tactical marketing,' and why should businesses avoid focusing on it?

'Tactical marketing' focuses on surface-level tricks, hacks, and tools, such as finding the best time to post on social media. Businesses should avoid focusing solely on it because it addresses minor details rather than the broader strategic and psychological aspects that truly drive long-term growth.

What is 'selfish marketing,' and how can businesses avoid it?

'Selfish marketing' is when a business focuses on itself, its products, and services, rather than addressing the client's or customer's needs. To avoid it, businesses should focus on empathetic marketing by understanding their clients' problems and providing solutions that are relevant and helpful to them.

What are the dangers of creating 'asymmetrical marketing'?

'Asymmetrical marketing' is when businesses focus too much on either providing value without making offers or making constant sales offers without providing value. Both approaches can harm customer relationships. The solution is a balanced approach that combines value-driven content with strategically placed offers.

What is 'premature marketing,' and how can businesses avoid it?

'Premature marketing' occurs when businesses make offers to customers at the wrong time, before they are ready to buy. Businesses can avoid this by following a strategic messaging sequence that nurtures relationships and ensures the right offers are made to the right people at the right time.

What is meant by 'mismatched marketing'?

'Mismatched marketing' happens when businesses fail to align their market, message, and media. Effective marketing requires understanding the target audience (market), crafting the right message that resonates with their needs, and delivering that message through the correct media channels.

How can businesses ensure they are using the right marketing media?

Businesses can ensure they are using the right marketing media by first identifying where their ideal clients and customers are active, then delivering their message on those platforms. The key is to focus on media channels where their target audience is present, rather than following trends.

Why is it important to address both 'miseries' and 'miracles' in marketing messages?

Addressing both 'miseries' (pains, problems, frustrations) and 'miracles' (desires, goals, dreams) in marketing messages helps businesses resonate more deeply with their audience. By understanding and addressing these aspects, businesses can position themselves as the ideal solution to their clients' problems.

What role does a marketing funnel play in avoiding premature marketing?

A marketing funnel helps businesses avoid premature marketing by guiding potential customers through a structured journey. This ensures that customers receive the right information and offers at each stage, moving them from awareness to purchase at the right pace, according to their readiness.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Intro to Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

The speaker introduces the topic by promising to share five top marketing strategies to help small businesses grow. With 10 years of experience and over 800 clients, the speaker emphasizes the difficulty of effective marketing but reassures viewers that it is possible. The goal is to avoid wasted time and money while focusing on what matters most to create successful marketing.

05:00

💼 The Importance of Marketing in Business Success

Owning a small business can be tough but rewarding if the marketing is handled correctly. The speaker underscores that marketing is critical to a business's success as it brings in leads, clients, and sales. Without strong marketing, businesses risk becoming costly hobbies that drain time and money. The speaker uses humor to convey the importance of avoiding this pitfall.

10:01

📈 Prioritize Strategic Marketing Over Tactical Marketing

The first mistake many businesses make is focusing on tactical marketing rather than strategic marketing. Tactical marketing consists of small, surface-level actions like deciding the best time to post on social media. While useful, it pales in comparison to strategic and psychological marketing, which considers whether the business should be on certain platforms at all and how to solve customers’ deeper problems.

15:02

🤝 Avoid Selfish Marketing and Focus on Empathy

The next common mistake is selfish marketing, which focuses on the business rather than the customer. The speaker explains that marketing should address the client's needs, problems, and desires, using more 'you' language instead of 'I' or 'we'. This empathetic approach builds better connections with customers by showing them how the business can solve their issues.

⚖️ Balance Value and Offers in Your Marketing

Many businesses either give too much value without asking for sales or push sales too aggressively. The speaker calls these 'asymmetrical marketing' approaches, which can either burn out the audience or lead to no sales at all. The solution is a balanced approach that combines value-driven content with well-placed offers to guide customers toward a purchase.

⏳ Avoid Premature Marketing with Sequenced Messaging

Premature marketing is compared to proposing on the first date—too fast, too soon. The speaker warns against making offers to customers before they’re ready, as it can lead to rejection or frustration. Instead, businesses should use sequenced messaging that builds a relationship over time, catering to different customer readiness levels (immediate buyers, near-future buyers, and long-term buyers).

🎯 Mismatched Marketing: Aligning Market, Message, and Media

The final mistake is mismatched marketing, where businesses fail to align their market, message, and media. The speaker emphasizes the importance of identifying the ideal customer (market), understanding their needs (message), and choosing the right platforms where they are active (media). This alignment ensures businesses are doing the right things in the right place for the right people.

📹 Next Steps: Understanding Marketing Basics

The speaker wraps up by directing viewers to another video on marketing basics, reiterating the importance of marketing fundamentals in business success. A quote from Sally Hogshead, 'different is better than better,' is shared to encourage viewers to stand out in their marketing efforts.

Keywords

💡Tactical Marketing

Tactical marketing refers to short-term, surface-level actions like figuring out the best time to post on social media. It focuses on quick fixes, tricks, or hacks that may offer small, temporary results but don’t contribute to long-term business growth. In the video, the speaker critiques tactical marketing as a common mistake businesses make, suggesting that it’s more important to focus on broader, strategic marketing decisions that truly drive success.

💡Strategic Marketing

Strategic marketing involves long-term planning that focuses on aligning business goals with customer needs, rather than just quick fixes. It’s about answering deeper questions such as where to post and how to create content that resonates with the audience's problems. The speaker advocates for this approach, emphasizing that businesses should prioritize strategy over mere tactics for sustainable growth.

💡Psychological Marketing

Psychological marketing goes beyond tactics and strategy by addressing the emotions, fears, frustrations, and desires of the target audience. It focuses on understanding customer behavior to create content that directly solves their problems or addresses their pain points. The speaker in the video advises upgrading marketing questions to a psychological level to better connect with potential customers and position the business as the solution to their issues.

💡Selfish Marketing

Selfish marketing is when businesses focus too much on themselves, their products, and their services, without considering what the customer truly needs or values. The speaker explains that this type of marketing is less effective because customers care more about how a business can help solve their problems. Instead, the video suggests focusing on empathetic marketing, which centers around the customer’s perspective.

💡Empathetic Marketing

Empathetic marketing focuses on understanding the customer’s problems, pains, and desires, and addressing them in marketing messages. It involves speaking directly to the customer and offering solutions to their issues. The speaker contrasts empathetic marketing with selfish marketing, advocating for businesses to use more 'you' statements, focusing on the customer's needs rather than constantly talking about the business itself.

💡Asymmetrical Marketing

Asymmetrical marketing refers to an imbalanced approach where businesses focus either solely on providing value (content marketing) or solely on making sales offers. The speaker criticizes this approach and suggests a balanced method where businesses provide value while also strategically placing offers to convert leads into customers. This balance helps avoid audience burnout or frustration from constant sales pitches.

💡Premature Marketing

Premature marketing occurs when businesses make offers or push for sales before their audience is ready to buy. This can damage the customer relationship and make the business seem pushy or desperate. The speaker uses the analogy of proposing marriage on the first date to illustrate this mistake, emphasizing the need for a strategic sequence in marketing, such as using funnels to guide potential customers to the right message at the right time.

💡Marketing Funnel

A marketing funnel is a step-by-step process that guides potential customers from initial awareness of a business to making a purchase. The speaker describes the funnel as crucial to avoid premature marketing and to ensure the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time. This structure helps to nurture leads who may not be ready to buy immediately but could become customers in the future.

💡Market-Message-Media Alignment

This concept refers to ensuring that your marketing efforts are aligned across three areas: the market (your target audience), the message (what you are communicating), and the media (the channels where you communicate). The speaker stresses that businesses must understand their ideal customers (market), craft messages that resonate with their pains and desires (message), and choose the right platforms where these customers are active (media) to succeed.

💡Customer Journey

The customer journey is the entire process a potential customer goes through before making a purchase, from becoming aware of a problem to considering solutions and finally buying a product or service. The speaker emphasizes the importance of guiding customers through this journey by delivering the right marketing message at each stage, helping ensure that marketing efforts lead to conversions. This journey is mapped out through a strategic marketing funnel.

Highlights

Marketing is the single most important element to your business's success.

Avoid focusing on tactical marketing, which includes surface-level tricks and hacks, and prioritize strategic and psychological marketing.

Strategic marketing involves answering deeper questions about content that solves your client's problems, while tactical marketing only addresses short-term issues.

Selfish marketing focuses too much on your business, while empathetic marketing addresses client needs and concerns.

Prioritize using 'you' instead of 'I' or 'we' in your marketing to create client-centric messages.

Avoid asymmetrical marketing: balance creating value with making offers to avoid audience burnout or lack of sales.

Clients will not buy if they're conditioned to expect only free content from you; mix valuable content with strategic offers.

Premature marketing happens when you make offers too early in the customer journey. Avoid this by segmenting your market and following a strategic messaging sequence.

The best marketing sequences guide customers through a funnel, presenting the right message at the right time.

Only 5% of your market is ready to buy immediately, while 85% will purchase in 4 to 18 months. Nurture relationships to capture the long-term buyers.

Align your market, message, and media: target the right audience, craft the right message, and deliver it on the right platforms.

Marketing fundamentals like segmenting your audience, delivering value, and creating timely offers are crucial to long-term success.

Your media choices should reflect where your target customers are most active and engaged, rather than following trends.

Effective marketing involves solving client problems by positioning your business as the solution to their pains and frustrations.

Marketing works best when it builds desire and interest, leading clients to approach you for solutions, rather than you chasing them.

Transcripts

in this video i'm going to give you five

of my best marketing strategies to help

you get more clients and customers

and grow your business by creating way

better marketing after 10 years as a

marketing strategist and having worked

with over 800 clients i know firsthand

just how hard it can be to create truly

effective and profitable marketing for

any small business

hard but not impossible so if you're

tired of wasting your time on things

that don't work

sick of wasting money on strategies that

get you nowhere and just about ready to

give up on this whole marketing thing

altogether

then stick with me because in this video

i'm going to show you exactly how to

promote your business

by focusing on what matters most so let

me show you how it's done

running a small business is tough

there's a reason that starting and

owning a small business has been likened

to

giving up the nine to five in pursuit of

the five to nine

and that's five am to nine pm just in

case you get too excited

but owning and running a small business

can also be one of the most fun

and exciting and rewarding and

profitable and yes even freedom

providing experiences

in the whole world but of course for

that to work you need to make sure that

your marketing

is absolutely dialed in this is because

marketing is the single most important

element to your business's success

after all it's marketing's job to help

bring in new leads and new clients

new customers and new sales for your

business and without those

you don't really have a business just a

really expensive hobby that chews up all

your time and wastes all your money and

proves your seventh grade teacher that

you'd never amount to anything

that was oddly specific that's right mrs

brooks i remember

so let's make sure that doesn't happen

to you and the best way to make sure

that you're covered

is to share with you five of my top

marketing strategies

many of which are principles and

fundamentals that'll not only serve you

today

but for the days and weeks months and

maybe even years to come

and to do this rather than just lay

everything out

instead i'm going to give you the

opposite approach or the mistakes that

you want to avoid

which more often than not are the

mistakes that most businesses

are making right now so by knowing where

most people go wrong and what mistakes

to avoid and essentially what not to do

you'll have a better and more clear

picture on exactly what you should do

and need to be doing

if you want to grow your business make

sense awesome let's get to it then

starting with the very first mistake

that most businesses are making right

now

which is focusing on tactical marketing

tactical marketing is the vast majority

i would say

upwards of ninety percent of the

marketing that you see going on right

now

by your competitors and by other people

in your market and

basically most markets out there this is

the kind of marketing that's all about

tricks and hacks and tools

and kind of those tactical surface level

things that

really don't amount to much in the long

game the best way to put this

is really in majoring in the minors or

by putting way too much focus and time

and money and energy

on kind of those smaller and almost

inconsequential details

that really don't matter that much a

perfect example of a tactical style

question would be something like what's

the best time to post on social media

it's not that this isn't a valid or

relevant question

but it's just one small part of a much

much larger picture for example we could

take this question and we could upgrade

it to a strategic level question by

asking

well should we even be posting on this

network at all and we could even upgrade

it again to a psychological level

question by asking well

what kinds of content can we create

that's going to best address the pains

and problems and fears and frustrations

of our ideal target market and then

create content that solves it for them

or shows and presents our business and

our offer

as the ideal solution to those pains you

see it's those strategic

and psychological level questions that

are really going to drive your business

forward by making sure that you're doing

the right things in the right place for

the right people

it's not that tactical questions aren't

important they are after all knowing

what to post and what time to post and

how many times these are all good but

they're answers that you can find really

quickly just by doing a quick google

search

on the other hand those strategic level

questions well they come from a much

deeper place and require

a deeper understanding of marketing of

your business and of the people you're

trying to serve

so rule number one here is prioritize

strategic marketing over tactical

marketing

alright the next mistake you absolutely

want to avoid is creating something

called

selfish marketing now here's the catch

with selfish marketing

it's rarely if ever done by selfish

people in fact the people that normally

create selfish marketing are good

honest hard-working and caring people

but they've fallen into the trap of

really

just not knowing any other way what

selfish marketing

is is marketing that's all about you and

your business

and your offer and your product and your

service and essentially everything in

your world

and less about your client or customer

and the person that you actually want to

serve

now i get it it's easier to create

selfish marketing i mean all you have to

do is talk about yourself and what you

do and

hopefully the right people will come

along but here's a reality check

it probably won't this is because

they're not going to be attracted to a

selfish style message

clients are always asking what's in it

for me how am i going to benefit

why is this relevant or relatable or how

is this going to help solve the problems

that i have and if you can't answer that

very very quickly

they just move on a bit of a

psychological shortcut you can use here

when you're taking a look through your

marketing materials

is to sort of do a bit of a cross-check

between how many times you're using the

word

you and how many times you're using the

word i or we

or us or something in regards to you

that makes sense

basically you want to use the word you

so you're speaking

to your client about your client to your

customer about their problems and always

wrapping up your marketing and your

message and your content in a way that's

relevant and relatable and helpful

to them the only time you ever really

want to be talking about yourself

is in regards to a story or a piece of

information

that would help them in some way shape

or form of course the only way to truly

do this

is to really understand your client and

your customer and where they're coming

from

to put yourself into their shoes and to

really try to be empathetic

to their pains and problems and fears

and frustrations and again how your

business is uniquely positioned

to help solve all those for them the

point of creating marketing messages

and content and blog posts or videos or

podcasts or whatever

is always about providing value creating

a connection building a relationship

and really trying to build that bond

between your business

and the client or customer you're trying

to serve so the takeaway point on this

one is to focus on empathetic marketing

over selfish marketing alright so with

that covered let's move on to the next

mistake

which is all about creating asymmetrical

marketing basically what asymmetrical

marketing is is essentially a lopsided

approach

taking one of two very different neither

of which are best paths

in the blue corner we have the extreme

value approach which is by far the most

common approach

that most people take where their sole

goal with all of their marketing is to

create

absolutely as much value as they

possibly can these are the people that

you see creating endless value driven

social media posts and

endless value-driven emails and podcasts

and videos and always always always

trying to contribute as much as they can

but never making an offer

and then in the red corner we have the

complete opposite approach

the extreme sales approach all they do

is create

offer after offer after offer always

trying to get you to buy buy buy

probably no surprise that neither of

these approaches is ideal

after all the extreme sales approach

really just leads to audience burnout

and them getting fatigued and

maybe even a little bit angry and

frustrated with you and your business

and can't really blame them on the flip

side the extreme value approach has some

pretty big drawbacks too

specifically if all you ever do is

create valuable content and never make

an offer

for someone to actually buy something

well they're never going to buy

worse is if you condition and train your

market that all you're ever going to do

is offer them free helpful content

when you finally do make an offer that

you're inevitably going to have to make

if you want to stay in business well

they're gonna get angry this is because

they've been trained and conditioned and

really look to you as that source of

free information

so anytime you do try to promote

something you're gonna come off as kind

of selling out

kind of being a little bit corporate

ain't nobody like that

so what's the solution well clearly you

can't go around creating nothing but

offers after all it's just spammy

kind of sleazy way too salesy and yes

you absolutely should be creating value

and trying to build a connection and a

bond and helping people as much as you

can

but at the end of the day you do have a

business to run and the odds are pretty

good that your free content

is only going to get someone so far if

they really want to take that next step

they're going to need to invest in

themselves and hey who better to help

them than you

this is why the alternative to the

asymmetrical approach whether it's all

value or all offers all the time

is more of a balanced and structured

approach essentially a good combination

of value

with strategically placed offers that

really help to take that relationship to

the next level

by solving their problems for them

alright so now that you know you need

both a value

element as well as an offer element to

really kind of marry the two together in

that perfect marketing

symbiotic relationship thingy well the

next question that comes up is

is there a right time to make this offer

to deliver your marketing

and to that my friend the answer is yes

and that leads me perfectly to the next

mistake you absolutely want to avoid

which is creating

premature marketing maybe you've heard

the expression that it never hurts to

ask well

i'm here today to pop that bubble for

you and tell you that yes it can indeed

hurt to ask as an example you could ask

the completely wrong people or segment

of your market to buy

they're not gonna buy and they're not

even gonna be interested the solution to

avoid that is to segment your market

or you could ask the right people to buy

but you could ask them at the wrong time

when they're not really ready or in a

position to do it the solution to that

is to follow a strategic messaging

sequence with your marketing another

example is you could ask them for the

wrong thing essentially putting the

wrong offer the wrong message of the

wrong promotion in front of them the

solution here is again

marketing by guiding them and leading

them and serving them and

helping to sort of move them in the

right direction for them of course or

lastly you could just ask in the wrong

way coming off as pushy

and needy and desperate none of which

are going to look good

none of which are going to work the

solution and alternative to that

is to create marketing so good that it

builds desire and

interest and conviction in the client or

in the customer

so they actually initiate the sale by

coming to you first you see premature

marketing is kind of like proposing

marriage

on the very first date not saying that

it doesn't work but

is the person that's going to say yes

really the kind of person you want to

sell to

plus statistically speaking if let's say

you were trying to rack up as

many marriages as possible well then you

would have a much better plan

by sort of spacing things out and

following a usual courting process or

courtship period in marketing we call

this a marketing funnel which is

essentially a customer journey that

allows us to present the right message

in the right sequence at the right time

to the right person all of which leads

to an inevitable

and logical conclusion of whatever that

sale or end result is

this is because when it comes to making

a purchase or making a buying decision

typically around five percent of your

market is ready to buy right now

they've got cash or credit card in hand

they have a problem they want the

solution

and well they're ready to act to get

this thing solved ten percent of your

market well they're going to be buying

in around the next 30 to 90 days which

means they're still open they're still

receptive

but you can't just hammer them with

sales offers one after another you're

gonna burn them out and frustrate them

before they've had a chance to make a

decision but the real money the real

value the real business growth

is in the 85 percent of people who are

ready to buy in the next four

to 18 months this is where the bulk of

all of your revenue and profits is going

to be

and this is why it's absolutely crazy to

immediately sort of indoctrinate someone

into your world and start making offer

after offer

after offer before they're even ready

the best marketing sequences the best

marketing campaigns

all have processes and automations baked

right in that allows you to serve

all three different segments of the

market and really provide them the

solutions and maximize your

profitability

in the process for example the five

percent who are ready to buy right now

well they're able to sort of bypass or

shortcut the system

to get the solutions they need the 10

who are ready to buy in the next say 30

to 90 days

well they can get a little more

information and then you're always going

to be there when they're ready to take

action and then that 85

who are going to buy in the next four to

18 months well it allows you to continue

to nurture and connect and build a

relationship

so that when they are ready to buy you

can be sure they're going to buy from

you

so the solution to premature marketing

is all about

sequenced marketing making sure that

you're following a strategic and

structured sequence

of messages and marketing that guide

someone from where they are now to where

they want to go

okay so with that said the next mistake

you want to avoid

is mismatched marketing when it comes to

marketing and creating truly effective

and profitable business growing

marketing campaigns

there's three different areas that you

need to look at the first of which is

market

these are the people that you seek to

serve so you want to make sure that

you've really dialed in your ideal

customer avatar which is

a fictional representation of all the

characteristics that make up the

absolute best people for your business

typically these involve things like

their demographic details like age and

gender and income and occupation

geographic details like what city or

state or province or country they live

in

and psychographic details like what are

their values and attitudes and

lifestyles and interests

once you've got the market dialed in

well then you need to take a look at the

message

and the message is really understanding

their pains and their problems and their

fears and their frustrations

all the things i call their miseries as

well as all the things that they want to

achieve and accomplish and have

which i call their miracles these are

their wants and their goals and their

dreams and their desires and again

the end state that they'd like to get to

all of your marketing needs to speak to

either their miseries or their miracles

really drilling and diving in deep into

their pains and problems

and then presenting the solution ideally

your business and your offer

as the cure and the fix for all the

stuff they're going through that they

just don't want to go through anymore

then once you've got your market dialed

in and your message it's time to move on

to the third piece which is the media

now when it comes to media these are the

marketing channels and platforms and

networks available to you

that you can use to help deliver your

message to your market

that's the key you see the way to pick

the best media

choice for you and for your business is

by lining up

who your ideal clients and customers are

and then finding out where they're

present and

active online and then going there and

only there

ignoring everything else this is by far

the most effective and most common sense

route and yet it is the complete

opposite

of what most business owners do you see

what most business owners do is a quick

google search or maybe talk to a few

friends or

people in their business community about

well what's the latest or

hottest social media network right now

and then they go there

sometimes this works but more often than

not it doesn't

because it's completely backwards you

can't go somewhere and hope your people

are there

way better off to find out where your

people are and then go there sounds like

a dance move

this is why the key to really succeeding

with your marketing is to make sure that

it's aligned from your market

to your message to your media so you're

doing the right things in the right

place for the right people and of course

at the right time of course the key to

tying all of this together and making it

work just that much better really comes

down to understanding and applying

key marketing fundamentals and basics

and this is why the next thing you're

going to want to do is check out the

video i have linked up right here

on understanding marketing basics for

business so make sure to check that out

now

and i'll see in the next video this is

by sally hogshead who says

different is better than better and when

it comes to marketing

this is pretty true after all we all

know about businesses who offer

a better product or a better service