What about small business owners and their issues with marketing? This can make or break them in their struggle to survive. Having a small business brings problems, as well as opportunities and owners, to have issues with marketing.
I personally have seen that small businesses have become more popular in the market today thanks to more people starting online businesses. We all know that maintaining a business is everybody’s dream although many will admit that doing so is not as easy as it may sound both offline and online.
You must spend your time on operational issues to keep your business relevant including small business marketing. Good marketing strategies are all that you need to attract your target audience. To increase sales small business owners’ issues with marketing must be understood and solved.
Businesses cannot become successful overnight. You will often struggle to make your marketing activities effective. if not, you will lose a lot of money and time would be wasted. Let us look at a few of these issues.
Not Really Knowing Your Target Audience
It is important to know who you are actually trying to reach out to there. This is the first step for you as the owner of your business. Many small business owners do not know who their target audience and market is. The definition of the target market is always too vague for them.
This is not always the case with an offline business offering a specific service such as plumbing, daycare, electrical, and so on. It is often the case with small businesses targeting a broad niche where they fail to narrow it down to more of a targeted micro-niche. Building your audience requires you to use multiple micro-niche channels. This is one way to overcome this issue.
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Poor Marketing Plan
Creating a proper marketing plan is often an issue for many business owners. You must understand that a good marketing plan helps you alleviate many marketing challenges. Without a plan is like chasing a shiny object.
I’ve always said that it is helpful to become an internet marketing spy when it comes to understanding what is working in the marketplace. If you can not do this you will have a problem duplicating what your competitors are doing.
Most likely you will have little to show and you will be wasting your time and money. Don’t worry! A proven marketing plan will enable you to effectively market your small business.
Related Video On Small Business Marketing
Justifying Marketing Expenditures
Small business owners have a tough task here. Justifying any expenditure on marketing needs a budget first and a strategy for spending it secondly.
Many do not fully appreciate what skilled marketing can bring to a business. For this reason, they lack ideas on how and where to spend the money.
What I often see businesses doing is they try and using the latest tactics in marketing because they think this is a shortcut to immediate results. In reality, this can be a shortcut to faster losses.
In my view, you should just focus on the value of marketing using proven strategies for long-term results. Doing this will help you justify your marketing expenses.
Inadequate Resources
Inadequate ResourcesOne area I see small business issues with marketing is funding for a newborn small business As the owner, providing enough advertising funds to start and sustain your business is a challenge.
This is a pressure that needs a solution in order to stay relevant in the marketing field. It’s not as easy a task as you may think.
Nevertheless, this trouble can be solved by making better use of the money you have. Manage the number of dollars and get organized by creating a realistic marketing budget.
As you experience success reinvest as much of the profits as you can back into more marketing. This will broaden your exposure and allow you to grow at a faster pace.
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Retaining Valuable Customers
This is another mountain to climb for small business owners. Having the right customer needs a lot of attention in a competitive market.
Don’t think after the first purchase the customer will always stick with you. Make sure you keep engaged via email marketing and direct mail to watch them return.
Remember that there are new apps and businesses popping up around you. They can easily take away your loyal clients in a heartbeat.
You only need to stay in touch with them on a consistent basis. Come up with a good customer retention plan that includes an easy-to-implement email marketing strategy such as a newsletter.
Whether you have an offline brick-and-mortar business or an online Internet business, social media needs to play a role in solving your small business marketing issues. In today’s marketing climate, you need to focus on 3 primary social media avenues.
- 1. Facebook.
- 2. Twitter.
- 3. Youtube
If you choose to go beyond that look at Instagram, and possibly a busy relevant discussion forum. Choose someone in your company to monitor results and respond accordingly.
Expansion
The goal of every small business is survival, profitability, and possibly growth. Knowing how and when to do the expansion is an issue.
Many business owners don’t know how to track their expenses. They also don’t know how to manage relationships.
Make sure you consider all factors including small business marketing before expanding your business. These include your cash flow and business scalability among others.
Final thoughts
Marketing itself has become an issue for many small businesses. The majority of these business owners don’t understand marketing concepts well today.
Yellow pages have long become an obsolete way to market a small business. Pay-per-click advertising online has become more expensive and less effective.
There are so many ways to market your small business online that I see businesses jump around with the idea of the day club so to speak. This is usually a surefire way to fail.
A better approach is to study your primary competitors and try to emulate what they are doing. If it is working for them, chances it will work for your business as well.
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Thanks for sharing this article. No doubt that this has been a serious challenge for many people in the area of establishing and maintaining a business. I am also a victim of this. The last business I did though offline, I had the challenge of resources, I was able to start but along the line, I needed funds to maintain it but couldn’t get despite how good the business is.
Some have the challenge of marketing of the product, even if they do have the finances and that is a big issue. taking an online course for free with Wealthy affiliate is really the first choice one should consider as you so mention.
This article has really pointed out the problem faced by small business owners and is one that should be read by all who wishes to start a small business. Thank you for these tips.
These issues are what will make or break your business as it did for many in the past. The idea of looking at other business may not be all, but having the education on marketing should be one first priority before starting one.
The few small business owners that I recommend Wealthy Affiliate went on to thank me for introducing this platform to them. some of them give me the business to maintain for them, and they are happy with the traffic they are receiving. Happy that find value here.
This is such a very informative article about small businesses.
For me, the greatest struggle here is not having enough funds. Nowadays, marketing is really getting expensive. If a small business doesn’t have enough funds to finance paid marketing, then it will surely take time to succeed or even not to succeed at all.
If I may add too, one of the struggles is all not enough connections. In order to really succeed, I believe in the right connections with a big-time marketer or influencer.
Overall, you got all the points there. Thanks for sharing.
All the best!
Thank you for the kind words on small business owners having some issues with marketing.
Yes, funding for small businesses is tough and it really takes a toll on someone, that is the reason I recommend Affiliate Marketing at first, to offset that funds, cause it much easier to make money online than staring a small business
Getting connected is a key factor for a small business to work. I have realized that a person who was in a well-established business and went on to open his or her own, comes out to be more successful than one who starting from scratch.
Thank you for the feedback an insight.
Wao! Thanks so much for this wonderful article. It is highly educative. When you are faced with an issue like this, the quality of a product goes a long way. A good product market it’s self.
When a product has good quality value, people can go out of their way to get. Another Factor that can be looked into is the price of the product. When bigger companies are selling their products at a high price, a small company can bring down its price.
The small business can adopt the law of demand and supply. That is the lower the price, the higher the quantity demanded. Truly, it is an informative way to solve identifiably. Best wishes!
Thank you for the comment and insight on issues facing small business owners. You are right concerning the prices and sometimes small businesses have to adjust for higher demands.
This is the tasks that business owners are faced with and if done right, they can increase their supplies and experience huge profit gains to that effect. Glad that you pointed that out.
I appreciate this post. I feel the most obvious issues are inadequate resources, are not identifying the real target audience. Getting valuable capital to start and maintain their business contributes more than half of the reason most small businesses do not thrive for long.
Even, most are started on loans. Also, not making proper research to limit the scope of their audience is another issue. I agree with your claim that they need to narrow down to the use of multiple micro niche channels.
thanks for sharing
Thank you for your input, Derrick. the sooner that these small business owners that marketing plays a major part of their business, the more would be successful. Thank you for the agreement.
Wao! Thanks so much for this wonderful article. It is highly educative. When you are faced with an issue like this, the quality of a product goes a long way. A good product market itself. When a product has good quality value, people can go out of their way to get.
Another Factor that can be looked into is the price of the product. When bigger companies are selling their products at a high price, a small company can bring down its price. The small business can adopt the law of demand and supply. That is the lower the price, the higher the quantity demanded. Truly, it is an informative way to solve identifiably. Best wishes!
The quality of the product does play an important part, and I am so glad that you mention that. Cause the best marketing would be referral marketing. Someone who has used the products.
You are absolutely right about the price playing a major factor in marketing your product and this is one issue that small companies are faced with on an ongoing process. thank you for pointing that out. All the best and thank you for the insight here.
As a business owner myself, I see fellow business owners here in my place neglect learning marketing especially Internet marketing. One of the reasons maybe is, their business runs on a simple operation like purchasing a product and then displaying in an area with high foot traffic.
In other words, just selling and profits are made. People only realize they need to learn marketing when they started thinking of expanding the business, open a new branch or new store in another place, and that makes them realize the importance of learning marketing. This article of yours is going to help a lot of business owners, and need to be shared on social media.
Hi Gomer, that is fine, but how long would you think that will last. I have seen companies run down to nothing cause they did not want to change their marketing strategies.
People move in and out of communities on a regular basis, and today everyone searches on their phones on what they are looking for. If your business is not online, how will they find your business?
Growing a small business today, ones have to be verse wIth social media and what Is trendIng In theIr busIness or else they would lose potential business.
Cheers!
Hello Bishop,
This writing is so much helpful for me as I have a small business. I do sell Indian women clothing and actually, I started it as a hobby. Now, as I continue to sell, there became a necessity to plan for so many things and also need to spend some quality time for the business.
At first, I brought some of the items I like to sell. Now I’m unable to understand my customer’s choice as they demand more. Your article is really very much helpful to me. It gives me a piece of clear information on what I should focus on. I think I can solve some problems I was facing. Thank you very much for this insightful post.
Warm regards,
Ranao.
Is great to know that this article has helped you in your small business. Women clothing is a high demand business, and if you approach it right, you can see some huge profits you can even use Amazon to help you and ease much of the burden on your part while you focus on another part of your business.
Here is the link on one of my article about Amazon FBA
Glad that you see the problem that you were facing and that you can rectify them. Please reach out to me if you need further assistance, I would be more than happy to lend a hand.
Thank you for the comment and kind words.