Marketing is the ‘the action of promoting & selling products or services, including market research & advertising.’ It’s the process of ‘creating, communicating, delivering, & exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, & society at large’. It allows you, as a business owner, to develop your brand values & to align these with your core customer universe.

Someone recently said to me that irrespective of a product or service, all businesses are technically marketing machines, & I couldn’t agree more. Good marketing drives customers, brand awareness, pipeline, sales & reputation. Marketing & marketing management is at the core of all business, however big or small. 

If you run your own business & manage your own marketing, it is often hard to define ‘marketing’. Firstly, because these activities might feel like second nature & you do them without necessarily thinking of them as ‘marketing’. Then secondly, marketing is present in all areas of business, from sales pipeline to service delivery. In this blog, I’m going to talk about some of the different aspects of marketing that are crucial for a small business owner to understand, & how you can use them to benefit your business.

A Simple, Effective Approach 

As a business owner, you have to wear many hats. Not only are you a customer service manager, salesperson & a bookkeeper, but you’re also a marketer. Marketing is a large & complex topic, & it can be overwhelming. In my 35 plus years of business, I have experience of many areas of marketing: what has worked, what hasn’t, & why. It can be useful to strip things back, & begin to look at your marketing from the ground up, which is where the 4Ps of Marketing can help you.

Marketing is all about putting the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time. The 4Ps of marketing refer to product, place, price & promotion. These four things make up the components of your ‘marketing mix’ & they help you to position your offering to meet a specific customer need or demand. 

Generally, if your model is business-to-business, you need to understand what causes your customers the most difficulty in their operation & give them a solution that alleviates this pinch-point. Your marketing should be about how you solve a challenge in their business. If your business operates more in the business-to-consumer market, your solution is less about relieving a bottleneck & more about creating an emotional response, which is often a primary driver in the customer’s decision process in choosing to buy. If you know how to trigger the right response then “hey presto!” your orders come flooding in. The 4Ps model can bring some structure to your marketing, & give you a framework from which to build.

Using the 4Ps format, you work to create a product that a particular group of people want, make it available at a location those people visit regularly, and price it at a level which matches the value they feel they get out of it, all at a time when they want to buy. Not such a simple task, but with a strategic approach, you’ll be able to capture all of your knowledge and experience, and use it in the most effective way. My blog on ‘The Four Pillars of Start Up’ helps guide you through business start-up,  & how marketing fits in. 

Brand Awareness 

The first step in the marketing funnel is brand awareness. This should encompass your company name, logo, product or service & any content you create, as these are all part of your brand. Each time a customer experiences one of these things, they are being exposed to your brand. The more familiar a customer is with something, the more likely they are to trust it & then gravitate towards it. So how can you influence how familiar potential customers are with your offering? 

There are some basic things that you should consider. Building your brand goes hand-in-hand with developing your credibility. The two things are inseparable. Here are some really good pointers to get you started:

Invest in a domain & associated email: for a matter of a few pounds you can buy & maintain a domain name & email. As an example, with IONOS¹, it costs just £10 per year for a .co.uk domain with an email. Additional emails can be bought for as little as £2 a month, for up to 25 addresses. Of course, there are free email addresses provided by the likes of Google & Microsoft, but every time you email someone with a Gmail or Hotmail domain, you are re-enforcing Google or Microsoft’s brand, not your own. Any serious business should invest in a domain & associated email, and by doing so, you make your brand credible. 

Have a website: for the sum of £1 per month in the first year & then £7 per month thereafter, IONOS² can host your website & provide basic templates to allow you to have a credible presence in the online world, and a smart looking website also enhances your reputation & credibility in the real world too. Investing some time on building a website is more important than you might imagine. When you meet people networking or using paid for advertising, they will check you out & the easiest way to do this is by visiting your website. Don’t make your website overly complicated, for many business owners a single page is really powerful. For some solo professional service entrepreneurs, maximising your LinkedIn profile can act as your website. 

Don’t get fixated with search engine optimisation (SEO): it is only really only relevant if your primary way to drive sales is for pay-per-click (PPC) style advertising, where being found on page one of Google is really important. SEO can be both time consuming & expensive, whether done in-house or outsourced. That's not to say that you shouldn't be mindful of keywords on your site & related to images, however the demands of SEO never stop. Once you have reached page one you need to work all the harder to stay there. 

Publish your contact information: make it easy for your customers to get in touch. If you have a business email address, don’t hide it or squirrel it away deep in your website. Make your contact business telephone or mobile number visible. Customers are fickle, so making it difficult to get in touch simply drives many people elsewhere, where they don’t have to work so hard to have the conversation they want. It’s more straightforward to have a conversation with a business that wants me (their customer) to call or email. 

Be timely in dealing with enquiries: answer emails & social media messages quickly, & return voicemail messages as soon as you practically can. If you really have to use a virtual reception, then make sure it is manned by real people rather than it being automated. Bots seem like a cost-effective solution. However, if your customers cannot ask the questions they want & the get the answers they need, they won’t feel valued & will shop elsewhere, where they feel they are valued more. Trying to predetermine what your customers will want to discuss is foolhardy. Once you put people in the equation, what you think you know goes out of the window. Equally, where enquiries are not resolved by your ‘real’ virtual reception, deal with them in a timely manner. Every point of contact forms & creates your customer experience, your brand presence & your credibility, so it is important to get it right first time, every time.

Understand your business mission & your vision: make sure your logo, tag lines, website, social media & other marketing collateral reflect your vision by being a coherent whole. Each tool or channel should explain collectively who you are, what you do & the way you do it. Align your brand values with those of your customers, so you are talking the same language.

Brand Building & Content Creation 

For a customer to be able to remember your product or service, their interaction with it must illicit feelings and emotion. The market is saturated with products, & we are being marketed to from every angle, from social media, to podcasts, to TV. This means your brand, & your marketing, needs to stand out from the crowd. Two words come to mind here: “consistency” & “continuity”. Both are so important in building a brand presence. Ensuring your differential & how customers can get in touch should always be front and centre of your brand’s marketing, allowing you to set yourself above your competition. How you communicate is critical, as it needs to be memorable  - my recent blog on storytelling discusses this in more detail. You can talk about difficult situations as long as you can build in a positive spin. What you want to achieve is a ‘warm & fuzzy’ feeling that draws your customers to you, rather than driving them away, which is what happens with negative connotations.  

Don’t worry if you don’t have a blog or some Instagram posts to hand. Look at what you already have & re-purpose it. Keep artwork simple so that it can be used in multiple scenarios. A Twitter post can become LinkedIn content, just add some more words to expand on the concept. A Racket audio, of 99 seconds, can be transformed into an article to post on your website & this, in turn, can become a selection of tweets. Blogs can be broken down & recorded into audio articles or podcasts. Build your library of content one piece at a time. Re-use what you create, especially on fast moving social media, as not everyone will see what you post the first time or second time or third time around, so use it again. 

Start small. A weekly LinkedIn Post can be just as effective as posting every day, plus it is more manageable. Keep it organic & make it count. Put time aside each week to craft your content, both text & artwork. Use you LinkedIn community to help spread the word, by tagging a few people who will help share your post, but don't always tag the same people each time. Mix it up a bit to keep it fresh. 

The Business Buzz Opportunity

As a small business owner your face & personality form a key part of your brand. So, you will need to be front & centre. If you look at my Buddha Connect brand, my avatar face is everywhere. Being bright yellow & pop art in style puts a smile on most people’s faces (it elicits that positive emotion we are all after) & this coupled with my cheery disposition, means that I & Buddha Connect are easily remembered, liked & trusted. I have built a credible brand full of bags of personality. 

If you’re reading this blog and thinking “I’d like a strategy similar to James’ & Buddha Connect”, or that a marketing strategy & plan are going to be added to your to-do list, or that you’re going to dig out your last attempt at one and refresh it, then I might have a solution for you. 

I am the Regional Lead for another highly respected & easily recognised brand: Business Buzz, the no fuss business networking brand. Becoming part of our local or regional team can be your marketing strategy, allowing you enhanced exposure to the Buzz Community. At Buzz we can support you in the promotion of your business through our networking events & with the introduction of Buzz Plus via our innovative booking app. It’s a chance to boost your local profile, all whilst supporting your local business community. Your local Buzz team talk about your business on our website, on the Buzz App, as a Buzz Plus business & you have the option to bring your banner, which will be displayed prominently at each monthly event.  The Buzz sponsorship package is designed to put your business front and centre. 

Alternatively, if being front & centre is what gets your juices flowing, then have you considered becoming a Business Buzz Host? You will be the centre of the local Buzz business community, a super-connector & someone other local business owners will want to connect with. Business Buzz offers you a marketing strategy in a box. You are supported in making your Buzz successful, but there is the option to dovetail your own marketing in to the plan. Buzz provides a range of resources and experiences to help you become a better marketing professional & to make your business grow. You just have to grab the opportunity with both hands. 

Setting Up For Success

In my view, successful businesses have marketing strategy at their core, driving every decision & informing your ‘why’, ‘how’ & ‘what’. Forming the foundation for future business activity, a marketing plan is the basis on which strategic decisions around how you create your culture & vision, & how you operate your business can be made. With your marketing & business strategy working in tandem, your communications can focus on allowing your customers to see how your business serves their needs, how great you & your product or service really is, & the value it will add to their lives. Being a market leader requires time commitment, research, analysis & experience, but with opportunities like becoming a Buzz sponsor or a Buzz host, you can benefit from a tried & tested approach, that helps take away some of the pain around your own marketing. We have countless testimonials to give you confidence in taking the plunge & to trust in both Buzz & with James from Buddha Connect, as your Buzz mentor. At Business Buzz & at Buddha Connect, we believe marketing should not only have a seat at the strategic table, but also as a core driver to your success. Does this sound like it could work for you and your business? Email me on james.brodie@buddhaconnect.co.uk and let’s talk marketing.

1.  At time of writing March 2022
2. There are plenty of web-hosting agencies in the market place, Go Daddy, Wix, 123 Reg & UK2, to name a few also offer similar solutions to IONOS