5 Effective Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners in 2024
Summary
TLDRThis 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
🚀 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.
💼 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.
📈 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.
🤝 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Tactical Marketing
💡Strategic Marketing
💡Psychological Marketing
💡Selfish Marketing
💡Empathetic Marketing
💡Asymmetrical Marketing
💡Premature Marketing
💡Marketing Funnel
💡Market-Message-Media Alignment
💡Customer Journey
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
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