Why do small businesses struggle with marketing?

The 2 biggest challenges faced by small business is access to finance and access to markets.

To keep your small business running, you need to generate sales. In order to get those sales, you need a consitant flow of high-quality leads. Leads are the lifeblood of small business! Without a proper marketing plan, there will be no leads!

The internet has introduced new channels in marketing - most notably digital marketing. This in theory should have leveled the playing fields allowing smaller business to compete with their larger rivals. Or has it?

Even if you’re an experienced business owner, the world of digital marketing can be intimidating. But with all the advancements in technology, data available and ever changing algorythems, how do you keep up? How much of your time or resources to you deicate to this?

There are many reasons why small businesses do not succeed with their marketing. This article looks at the most common ones and explains what your can do to overcome them to improve your marketing performance.

The Need to Increase visibility and generate quality leads

Lead generation and visibility as a small business is critical for sustainability. The competition is fierce, especially in the digital age. Customers will go where they can find the best product or service at the lowest price. Creating a memorable experience for your customer is key to generating leads, referrals, and repeat business.

Visibility is critical for small business

It's important for all businesses to maintain strong visibility, but it's critical for small businesses. Not only do you have to compete with larger, more established brands, you also need to fight for your share of voice in an increasingly noisy digital landscape. If you're not getting enough visibility and voice, it makes it much harder to attract new customers and grow your business. Smaller companies struggle because they aren't able to create a brand identity that resonates with consumers in the same way larger companies are able to. So when a company has a small budget and limited resources, how can they increase their visibility? Here are some ways:

• Get featured on local sites like connexion.zone, Yelp, Trip Advisor or UberEats
• Create content that speaks directly to your target audience
• Ensure visibility on Search Engines like Google and Bing
• Take advantage of social media marketing

Access to Markets

Lack of access to markets is a big problem for small businesses. As a small business owner, you probably aren't able to spend as much on marketing and sales as your larger competitors. For example, citywide billboards are just not in the budget for most small businesses.

You will need to make every cent count when it comes to marketing if you want your business to grow without spending too much money on marketing and advertising. You can build a strong brand and reputation by focusing on creating great products and services that people love. You also need an online presence where customers can find information about your products and services, get support from your team, and read reviews from other customers who have used your products or services before.

Using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn etc is also very important for any small business today. Please note that social media platforms DO NOT replace the need for a Website for your business .

Small Business Struggle to find their share of voice

Small businesses have a lot of challenges to overcome, particularly in this economy. They're competing with bigger companies that have more resources and experience in marketing, and they struggle to find their share of voice. This is why it's important to develop a strong brand that can be consistently communicated across all channels. When executed properly, a small business will stand out among the noise with a cohesive image and message that speaks directly to its target audience.

There are a number of reasons why marketing can get complicated for smaller businesses, including:

• Lack of resources (time and money)
• Not having a plan
• Difficulty in selecting the right media mix
• Choosing the right social media platforms
• Consistent execution of marketing activities
• Producing and delivering content (ads, brochures, websites, blogs etc.)
• Keeping up with trends and technology when it comes to digital/social media

Lack of resources (budget / people / time)

As a small business owner, you may not have the resources to hire a marketing agency or dedicate your time to developing and implementing a marketing strategy. So how do you compete with larger, more established companies? How do customers find you? Marketing automation is one possible solution.

Marketing automation allows you to focus your efforts on more important tasks by eliminating repetitive, manual processes. Instead of spending hours researching prospects and manually creating personalised email campaigns , technology will automate these tasks for you. You don’t need extensive training either because many marketing automation platforms are simple enough for any employee to use. This allows small businesses to create personalised content at scale and deliver it automatically to their website visitors, leads or customers via email or direct mail.

Marketing automation is not for everyone. As a business owner, you have many balls to juggle and you need to weigh up the options of how tech-savvy you are vs where your time can be better spent in your business. If you don't have a Marketing plan in place, your message to market will be lost.

Not having a Marketing Plan

As the syaing goes: "Failing to plan is planning to fail"

Having a marketing plan is an absolute must for small businesses. It provides clarity and can help you keep the right things at the top of your list. Without one, it's easy to get distracted and spend time on activities that are not ultimately going to help your business grow. What's worse, it's easy to waste money where it could have been spent more effectively elsewhere.

A well-written marketing plan is like a roadmap that helps you understand and achieve your goals, stay focused on what matters most, and avoid wasted time or money. It also helps you identify who your competitors are, understand your target market and potential customers, set reasonable goals and create a step-by-step action plan for reaching them.

Not enough resources to carry out a marketing plan

A marketing plan is the key to making sure your marketing budget and time are spent properly, and it's vital to make one before you start spending money on marketing. Without a plan in place, you have no way of knowing whether or not what you're doing is working. Your larger competitors have dedicated resources doing this on a daily basis, so it is important that your marketing plan creates the impact (disruption) it needs to attact your ideal clients.

Here’s what a well-crafted marketing plan should include:

• Your company's definition of success
• A clear description of your target audience
• An honest assessment of where your business stands today
• A list of goals for the coming year (or quarter)
• A listing of all the resources that you have available at your disposal (such as people, money, and time)
• Where to find your potential customers

Difficulty in choosing the right media mix

The first challenge is to choose the right media mix for your business. Many small business owners struggle to find the balance between traditional and digital media that best suits their business and their budget.

The second challenge is to effectively measure the effectiveness of each type of media. The lack of knowledge of appropriate tools even leaves professional marketers in a situation where they have no way of knowing which medium (or combination) generates better results.

The third challenge is choosing the right social media platforms in order to improve visibility among customers or prospects. Marketing on social networks often seems relatively easy, but it has its own set of challenges that can be difficult for small businesses who do not have an established presence on these platforms yet: finding enough content to publish regularly, finding good partners to collaborate with, etc.

Last but not least, small businesses with limited budgets often struggle to find their share of voice within a very crowded market dominated by large companies with much larger resources than theirs (both financial and human).

Choosing the right social media platforms

If you're just starting out and you don't know which platforms will best serve your business and build up your clientele, there are a couple of options:

• Experiment with all of them. Try each one out for a period of time and see which ones are most effective in reaching your target demographics.
• Focus on one. If you decide to go this route, it's important to do your research beforehand so that the platform you choose will be the right fit for what you're trying to achieve.

Do some market research on which platforms are most popular among those who typically buy or use the products or services that you provide. Think of it as a social watering hole. This can help narrow down your options considerably. The only stipulation is that even if people in your target group aren't using a certain platform at all, it might still be worth experimenting with if what it has to offer aligns well with what you do (for instance, if your business is highly visual).

There isn't necessarily a right or wrong way to go about navigating your options when choosing social media networks—you might find success through trial and error instead of basing everything off of analytics—but no matter how you approach this myriad choice, it will pay off big-time in the long run to have the right information before making any decisions.

Consistent execution of marketing activities

Consistency is about being present on a regular basis so that your audience learns to expect and anticipate content from you. The more often you publish quality content, the more consistently your audience hears from you, the better you’ll be at converting them into paying customers.

Consistency isn’t just important for building an audience. It also helps build trust with your existing customers. When they know what to expect from you, they are less likely to go elsewhere for the same products or services. If there are no surprises and they always know what to expect, they’re going to feel good about working with or buying from you in the future.

Let's look at some of the simplest ways to stay consistent as a small business owner:

• Make Use of a scheduler like Hootsuite or Buffer.
• Schedule out some time every week (a couple of hours) when you'll work on creating content.
• Always have several blog posts written and ready to publish over the next few weeks.
• When you're taking photos of your product/service/space, take enough for multiple posts
• Create different types of content — not just blog posts.

Your larger competitors have resources dedicated to doing this. Those resources need to show results. It is important that your marketing plan takes this into account and can deliver your message to market.

Producing and delivering content

Content is the key to marketing success. The last thing you want to be doing is wasting time and money on content that isn’t going to get anyone’s attention.

To ensure your business doesn’t fall victim to this vicious cycle, take the following steps:

• Consistency. To truly engage an audience, you need to produce high-quality content on a consistent basis. Content should be delivered as frequently as possible, if not daily (for brands that are actively engaged in social media). The more frequently you publish, the greater number of opportunities you have to reach your audience and the higher likelihood there will be for people to remember your brand over those who don’t post regularly. Additionally, it allows for a more diverse selection of topics so that readers can find multiple points of interest with any one piece of content, rather than just one focal point where their attention will drift away from if it doesn’t hold their interest.
• Quality over quantity. It's far better to publish fewer pieces and spend more time on them in order to ensure they're written well than just churning out whatever comes up first when googling “how do I write good blog posts?” Don't settle for mediocre; aim high and create something amazing! If people enjoy reading your work or find value in what they see posted here today then they'll share links with friends who might like what they read too - that means even more traffic coming back every day because everybody wants new stuff all the time!

Keeping up with trends and technology

The last of the reasons why small businesses struggle with marketing is that they don't keep up with trends and technology. The phrase "you snooze, you lose" applies to marketing, especially with social media marketing. Facebook's "organic reach" is decreasing every year. Google's Alogrithm changes continuoulsy. LinkedIn is evolving at a rapid change and Facebook has already implemented sweeping changes.

With Facebook's ever changing algorithm, it pays to know what the new best practices are for social media and keep up with them by testing out new ideas or features each time one is released. Keeping up can be hard for small businesses who may not have the time or resources to stay on top of trends and try out new things as much as big brands do, but doing so can pay off in terms of exposure and engagement. The general trend is that fewer people are seeing posts from pages they like, because promoted content in their newsfeeds takes preference over organically generated posts.

With so many factors at play it would be sensible to look at sourcing the right skills to achieve your marketing goals.

Lack of trust in marketing agencies

It’s more important than ever for small business owners to focus on the growth of their business. In order for them to do so, they often look to hire a marketing agency . However, one thing holding them back is the lack of trust in these agencies. One major reason why this might be is that there is a lack of transparency about what the agency does with their money. Sometimes agencies don’t explain how they are spending it or how much they are spending on activities such as social media outreach or content creation. This ultimately leads small businesses to pull away from working with these agencies and try doing it themselves, which then results in the agency losing business. Transparency is key when it comes to building relationships and trust between two parties, whether we’re talking about personal or professional setups.

Specialist Agencies do not cover the full spectrum of marketing

Once you have a marketing plan in place, you might want to hire individual specialists to execute portions of your marketing plan. This can be a very effective method, but you need to bear in mind that:

• You need to rely on a number of specialist agencies.
• There is no single person or team who has oversight of the entire marketing plan and the associated budget (except you)
• The end result of this approach is that your marketing plan is fractured and disconnected, with each agency responsible for a small part of your overall marketing effort, rarely looking beyond their area to see how it fits into the overall plan.

Not being sure about what are the right ways to market their business

It is easy to understand why many small business owners and managers feel overwhelmed by marketing. They often have limited knowledge of the function, are unsure of what are the right ways to market their businesses, and may not know what marketing strategy or tactics they should use.

Before you can create a marketing plan for your business, it is important that you first understand your audience, products or services, competition, industry and finances. This will help you identify your business’s needs which in turn will help you create clear marketing objectives.

Not being able to brief a marketing agency

If you don't have clear mearketing obejectives, it is impossible to to brief an agency. As a business owner, you should be able to know what they do, what they provide, and how they work.

Without this, you will not know what to ask the agency, not will you not know what to expect from the agency (and therefore not knowing when you need support/help).

Be clear about what you want from your marketing agency

When a client comes to us with a marketing request, we dive into the process of understanding their business and what they’re looking to get out of our services.

If you want your agency to be successful, there are a few things you’ll want to consider before the relationship gets going:

• Be clear about your goals and expectations for the project: Is there a specific goal you want this project to achieve? A realistic metric will help gauge success down the line. The best agencies will be able to translate that goal into an achievable set of tasks. For example, if you want your sales team to have more leads, define how many leads you’ll need per month or quarter in order for it to be worth your time and money. (The number alone won't do much good—you'll also need salespeople onboard who are prepared and trained on converting new customers.) Then the agency can come up with specific tactics that will get you closer to that goal—for instance, creating an email list strategy or writing landing pages optimized for online sales.
• Be clear about your budget: Before diving in headfirst, make sure you know exactly how much money is available (and approved) for this project. This can make any hard conversations easier by providing a point of reference when comparing services provided by multiple vendors.

Small businesses may lack the resources to market their products effectively

One of the main reasons small businesses struggle with marketing is because it takes a lot of resources to market products effectively. It's hard for small businesses to put aside money for marketing, since they often have a limited amount of capital.

With all the different digital platforms available, small business owners are often confused about where and how to advertise their product or service.

Small businesses may not be able to afford an in-house marketing team or invest in all the tools required for effective marketing campaigns. There are tools available online to help you, if you have proper marketing plan in place.

Partnering with the right marketing agency can save you a lot of frustration, time and money. Ask them the difficult questions and get the results that you agreed upon.

Just because your business is small, doesn't mean your marketing should be

Just because your business is small, doesn’t mean your marketing should be. Many people still think that marketing budgets are reserved for the large corporate companies and that it isn’t something they will ever be able to afford as a small business owner. But this just isn’t true – there are a range of tools out there at anyone’s disposal, which can help you target the right audience for your business without breaking the bank. There are very effective marketing agencies out there that do not cost an arm and a leg and can deliver the results that you want a lot quicker and more efficiently. Take your time to find the right one.

Get that marketing plan in place

• Establish what it is you want to achieve from your marketing tactics.
• Is it awareness in your local community?
• Are you looking to get more customers through the door?
• Or are you trying to increase sales revenue by getting current customers spending more?

Once you know what you want to achieve, think about who can help you get there and how much budget is available.

Key Takeaways

Small businesses will always have to struggle with resource constraints. Decide on the goal of your marketing before you start any campaign. If your goal is growth, then taking a long hard look at how you can invest in marketing is your first step.

Some things to keep in mind:

• You can’t do it all yourself! Learning to outsource and leaning on trusted marketing specialists will help you see results a lot faster.
• As you grow, marketing becomes more complicated and a bigger time investment. Start hiring people who know how to show a return on it.
• Look into tools and technologies to help offload the need for more people.?Marketing automation ?is helping lots of small businesses remove some manual tasks to free up time.

With the mindset on marketing, you’ll be ready to start smashing those revenue goals you set for your business!