Think ignoring marketing your business doesn’t hurt? A recent study by The Marketing Centre showed that 67% of small and medium businesses had no written marketing action plan. Constant Contact released the results of a study this year showing that 57% of this same group undervalue marketing their business and spend less than an hour a week dedicated to marketing efforts.
It’s not hard to see why. Digital marketing strategies and tactics are notoriously difficult to learn and stay up-to-date on. Google routinely makes significant changes to its ranking algorithm and changes where items in the search results appear. Oh, and did I mention that business owners’ time is almost always spread perilously thin?
Let’s examine the potential consequences of not marketing or under-marketing a business.
Missed Revenue Opportunities from Ignoring Marketing
SMBs are in a constant fight for survival. Making potential buyers aware of your presence, much less your value proposition, can seem daunting. Still, some marketing is better than none. Efficient, effective marketing can make a difference in attracting customers and building a loyal following. Businesses that don’t build some following are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to competing with other businesses in their local area or niche.
In fact, given the statistics outlined at the top, if you do any kind of organized marketing, you will have a significant advantage over 67% of other businesses. The ROI for your time can be high. Small, consistent efforts could lead to the competitive advantage you need to flourish while your competitors flounder.
Diminished Brand Visibility and Customer Trust
Making your target audience aware that you even exist is a big challenge, especially for new, unknown brands. In local markets, there are a limited number of eyeballs at any one given time. Using ideas like personas (a fictional representation of a business’s ideal client) makes it possible to tailor messaging to a surprisingly focused number of marketing channels. With a disciplined, informed effort, a small time investment can pay back in spades. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a business without brand awareness will be limited to people passing within viewing distance of a location.
Most businesses can’t survive on customers just running into the store by chance. There’s got to be effort.
Increased Competition and Stagnation
People like to go on and on about harsh realities these days, so I’ll throw one out here. If you’re not marketing your business, you’re making your competitors really happy. Because they are. More and more business owners are waking up to the idea that there are resources to help them learn to do some basic marketing and they’re doing it. Most new businesses fail in the first several years of their existence. Many factors go into why businesses fail, but I’ll wager that new businesses that engage in some form of marketing help their cause immensely.
Let’s take Wilmington, NC as an example. A quick search on the Yellow Pages site for “barber shop” in Charlotte reveals 389 results. Some of these are franchises like Super Cuts, but a lot are Mom and Pop shops. These shops depend highly on getting known in the immediate vicinity of their location for traffic. A quick look through some of the top-rated barber shops shows that at least some effort has gone into crafting an online marketing message. The ones at the end, not so much.
One other factor to consider is business stagnation. Let’s say you have a good initial surge in business when you open because of initial marketing efforts. Business is good, but effort wanes as the months roll on. The likelihood of the business dropping off the map and being forgotten becomes a big concern. Even minimal outreach and marketing can help preserve old customers and get repeat business or more reviews, which helps kick in the old favorite: word-of-mouth referrals.
A side note here about word-of-mouth: it doesn’t come from thin air. It comes from getting clients, giving them a great experience, and (hopefully) getting some favorable reviews. Word-of-mouth comes LAST.
How to Marketing Your Business Yourself, Or With Some Help
The cost of ignoring marketing is high and potentially fatal for a business. Even if you start strong, you can drop off the face of the map unless you keep reminding people who you are and how you can fix their problem. But it doesn’t have to be a heavy lift.
“Learn How to Market Your Business Yourself” is a course we’ve developed that can teach you the basics in four one-on-one hour-long sessions. We can give you a framework to build a viable, effective marketing plan for your business by yourself in as little as 1-2 hours a week.
Of course, we’re also available to build more comprehensive marketing plans and execute them for you if you want to ensure you’re devoting 100% of your time to other aspects of running your business. We have a combined 35 years of experience in digital marketing and can quickly build you a plan that will put your head and shoulders above your competitor’s marketing efforts.
Contact us today, and we’ll help you decide which plan is right for you.
Get more info at Tenon SEM’s Google Business Profile.