As a small business owner you have to put out fires all the time. Sadly marketing tends to take a back seat for many companies. This is 1 reason why there are so many marketing consultants out there.
A good consultant is able to help you prioritize your marketing efforts by taking the time to understand your needs and your customer needs.
This week we still have a written guide but most of the meet is going to be inside the video hangout.
Major Pitfalls
Biting off More than you can Chew
I’m guilty of this myself. We all like to draw up grand plans but then we stall when implementing those plans because there is just too much work that needs to be done and too many projects.
There is nothing wrong with sitting down and writing out a holistic marketing plan that takes advantage of PPC networks like AdWords or Bing ads and leverages those efforts on Facebook and other social media platforms.
However you should break this plan down into manageable goals and focus on getting just 1 of these platforms going and working smoothly before you move onto something else.
By focusing your limited time and efforts on 1 advertising platform you will be able to learn more about how that platform works and will be able to optimize better..
Keep Testing and Learning
It’s common for many small businesses when they first start marketing online to think that advertising should just work and that they will be profitable off the bat. It’s very very rare that I have ever launched a campaign and just started making a profit and this is with 12+ years in the industry and millions of dollars spent advertising on several platforms.
In order to become profitable you need to keep testing and optimizing your campaigns. This is why focusing on 1 ad platform is important because you can dedicate all your time on this 1 platform and really learn what you need to do to be succesfull
You Have To Spend Money to Make Money
It’s not unusual in the service based industry to have $10 cost per clicks on AdWords. There are some industries were CPC prices are very seasonal. Carpet cleaning for instance is one where you will notice CPC prices go really high about 2-3 weeks before major holidays because of the increased interest in people wanting their homes cleaned.
Only by spending that higher dollar amount per click can you really get a feel for how well your ad copy will perform and see how much volume is out there for the keywords or target groups you are targeting.
Luckily you can day part for just your business hours and you can set a daily max budget so you are comfortable with the total ad spend for the day.
Take Ownership of Your Sales Process
Nobody is going to care more about your business and success then you. Pawning your marketing efforts off on an employee rarely works unless that is their full time job. You need to first dive in yourself and learn how to become profitable. Once you start marking money and have a solid sales funnel in place then it’s fine to put things on autopilot and let an employee take over the marketing. Till then it’s your responsibility to ensure things are working.
Over Coming Failures
Here is my favorite quoted slightly modified to fit me. “Success is 70% Failure. For me it’s more like 90%. The secret is to fail quickly and learn from your mistakes.”
When I tell people who have not done much marketing that 9 out of 10 campaigns I run fail they tend to be shocked. It’s not that I can’t get a campaign profitable but that it normally takes at least 10 major changes in order to tweak a campaign into profitability.
Things get a lot easier as you discover what kinds of sales funnels work. If you get a campaign profitable on AdWords search for instance then chances are that same campaign will be profitable on Bing ads as well.
Nothing is Working
Often times when nothing seems to be working, you are actually making progress but might not recognize the progress you are making. Failure is important to see what does not work.
What I tend to recommend goes back to my first statement and that is not biting off more then you can chew. You may need to take a step back and stop most of your current efforts and focus on just doing and testing 1 thing to the best of your ability and with 100% attention.
Get Help
You should also seek out help from experts to talk about your current challenges. There are many local marketing meetups on places like meetup.com that are free to attend. You have a plethora of options to get help and insights online as well for whatever you are doing. the MPB private Facebook page for instance is a great way to ask specific questions and get answers from experts in the field.
Measuring Progress
One thing rarely talked about online is how to measure your progress. Generally I tend to take my overall ROI week over week and as long as I’m moving towards a positive ROI I chalk it up as a success.
So your first week you might be at -90% ROI but by week 2 you may be at -70% ROI. That is great progress for just 1 weeks time.
Keep making tweaks and working the sales funnel till you have a profitable campaign.
In order to measure your ROI you will need to understand what a lead or new customer is worth to you and you will need to be able to fully or at least mostly track the entire sales funnel.
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