Category: Marketing

The typical progression with marketing and the life of a small business owner takes a few twists and turns. Typically, a North American based small business owner will start their business without the appropriate level of business acumen to effectively start and run a business. Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg reported that 8 out of 10 small business owners will fail in business within 18 months. (Published September 2013)

Due to this lack of knowledge, many small business owners in order to save costs (in their minds) will attempt to conduct and manage the marketing themselves. In most instances, this action quite honestly has lasting negative sales impact, profitability impact, customer service impact, and overall business branding impact. In some cases, that negative impact is difficult to realize (at least in the beginning) short term. Once you have realized that the marketing side of the business is taking significant amount of time away from you actually doing what you love(the very thing you decided to do when you opened your business), you realize that you need to hire some type of marketing support.

The next step in business owner life progression brings many of you to a crossroads. Should I hire an in house marketing person( I have read the Craigslist Ads that you have written looking for a marketing coordinator, customer service representative, sales person, personal assistant, and support person *all in one* for the bargain price of $10.00 per hour  ), or should I entertain those “spam” emails and phone calls I receive about marketing?

Once you have realized at this point in your business life progression either: Hire the $1600.00 minimum, per month cost to employ a $10.00 per hour Jack or Jane of all trades to manage Marketing, or hire one of the agencies that have been emailing you (multiple times per day) and calling you regularly. No matter which direction you have chosen, what you should establish are reasonable expectations with respects to how you manage those relationships and how much you should be involved.

Keep in mind that a marketing staffer “might be” but the marketing agency “will be” the subject matter experts in marketing and advertising. You as the business owner are the subject matter expert around your business model or widget(s) that you create and sell. If you truly wish to realize sales and profitability success with the marketing you are paying for, you must be involved in the process. It is critical that you help your employee or agency create content, images, videos, sound bites, and specials or promotions. You must provide feedback and approvals. If you are paying an employee or paying for a service why would you not show direct involvement in something you are paying for? How much time do you need to be involved? That is a great question. The answer is really contingent upon how “bad” your marketing, sales, and profitability performance historically has been. If your sales are down or flat, if your profitability is down or flat, or if your marketing program is dismal-you should plan to invest the time necessary to ensure that your employee or agency is steered in the right direction in support of success for your business. If you hire an employee or an agency and then drop off your mess in their laps, your ultimate success could be improved but most likely would only show limited improvement.

You must be collaborative: If you approach your employee or agency with a jaded eye and an “ah ha I gotcha” mentality, your employee and agency are not going to be able to function in a creative, forward looking, and proactive manner in support of your marketing success. If you spend all of your interaction time looking for items that the employee didn’t complete or the agency didn’t complete instead of looking for creative ways to execute each segment of your campaigns, you are wasting valuable time and resources. It is human nature for “people” to work hard in support of doing a great job. Work to solve the root cause of problems and then focus on moving forward. If your employee or agency missed the mark with marketing did you fail to send in content? Did you fail to create content? Did you fail to direct them with specials, promotions, giveaways? Did you take weeks to provide feedback or an approval on a priority they were waiting for? Did you NOT take the work they sent you over for approval seriously? Did you not even review it? At the end of the day, as a business owner, the only person you are accountable to is the person you see in the mirror. Be sure to be purposeful, honest, and involved with what you are paying for in business. The CEO’s of major U.S. Fortune 50 organizations do not run their day to day operations on vacation 365 days per year, why do you think that you do not have to be: Supportive, hands on, helpful, proactive, and respectful with vendor and employee relationships, while still expecting great success?

Statement:  We have never really budgeted, invested or taken a look at marketing and advertising.  But now things have changed.  The population has moved and our customers are moving towards internet based research, e-commerce, and we need to change with the times.   How much should I budget for marketing?  I mean really!

-OR-

The baby boomers have retired, which is the age demographic group that relied heavily on referrals and word of mouth referrals.  We now need to do something different with our business to stay in business in 2015.

First let’s look holistically at our business model, our geographical location and our customer demographics.  Many small business owners view MARKETING, Human Resources, Legal assistance, Compliance, and training as luxury expenses.   Often times these expenses are only added to the business operations when a major problem has occurred within one of these categories or the business is running the risk of failing.  Marketing, HR, Compliance, Training, and Legal Assistance for a small business are ANYTHING BUT luxury expense items.  They are the most critical components to effectuating a successful business plan.  So, let’s discuss How much should I budget for marketing!

Successful, established, North American based businesses budget and spend 4-6% of their annual revenue in advertising. Company’s like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walgreen’s, Walmart, mine and your successful peers.  What did I emphasize and bold type face established?  Established businesses are defined as businesses that have created an executed their business plan correctly, which in large part includes a well strategized and executed marketing plan.  If your business has not completed those components even if you may have been in business for many years, I would still categorize your business as a startup.  You are a startup because you most likely have never realized your full potential in business with sales and profitability. Startup businesses will budget and spend upwards of 10% or more of your revenue| start up capital | or borrowed capital to brand yourselves as well as generate new client leads.  Where you all will fall within your 4-6% or your 10% or more depends on the type of industry your business trades in, your location demographics, and complexity around your business model.  If your business model trades within a competitive business space such as a:  Lawyer, Dentist, Electrician, Construction, Plumber, your marketing spend will need to be budgeted at the high end of the ranges given.  If your business sells obscure, niche, or hard to find items, you would be able to budget a marketing spend at the lower end of the ranges given above.  Now that we have discussed How much should I budget for marketing, let’s discuss how to make this topic a big more palatable.

Budgeting ANY expense in business is formulated as a percentage of gross sales and included in your budget as a line item on your P & L and your budget.  I have always told my leaders in business to “solve the right problem”.  If your Labor, Cost of Goods Sold, Marketing, Office Expenses are too high, then you should control the expenses that are the outliers.  Many of us want an A office building, at the top floor, with an ocean view, however, if that rental payment causes your rental expense on your P&L to report over 16%; that is typically not an affordable rent expense.  If our budget requires us to have a home office, or rent in a B or C office building to ensure we stay between 12-16% of sales- that is the answer.

If you make it a habit to “solve the wrong problem” in business and cut expenses within the wrong line items of your businesses P & L you could very well negatively affect your top line revenue, customer experience, profitability and you could start the downward spiral of death for your business.   Lastly you might be saying to me “We’ll I don’t have the money that McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart, and Walgreen’s does” you’re probably right.  The key differences though between them and YOU is, is that when they were a small business like you are today, they executed their business plan correctly.  They budgeted marketing at 4-6% when times were good and when times were lean.  In large part, those decisions when they were small, allowed those companies to be who they are today.  Please send us a message if you’d like to discuss this topic: E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900

Currently, in 2016 there are almost 1 Trillion active websites being hosted throughout the world today. It is now more important than ever, to build your website correctly, strategically, and in the mindset of achieving the mission you expect with each webpage of your website. The Marketing and Advertising industries have conducted extensive A/B Testing with respects to website traffic and website customer lead conversion metrics. Through this discovery process we have identified 5 components that websites need to show the consumer or business customer within 10 seconds of the them viewing the web page in order to realize the best possible lead conversion for their website. Listed below are the 5 components of optimal lead conversion you need to implement within your website design for the best lead and customer conversion.  Remember, the ultimate objective with our website is converting website traffic into leads:

1. Who are you? Your business logo needs to be strategically placed at the top left hand corner of the website. Throughout the English language, we read from left to right, top to bottom. This is also standard across most websites and so the reader is programmed to look for it in that spot.
2. What do you do? The reader(not you, but if you can’t decipher what you do from seeing your website, that’s worse) needs to be able to easily identify in 10 seconds of seeing your website, what it is that your business does, what service that it provides to your consumer?  In order to receive the credit for this, it needs to also be identifiable BEFORE the fold, or before you scroll your webpage down to the bottom.  The area that you see when you type a website url(website address) into your website browser immediately when it loads, is called the “HERO” area.  Your website is going to be a Hero or a Zero and the customer will make that determination within 10 seconds.
3. What makes you different from your competitors? The consumer needs to understand what makes YOU different from your competitors?  The website home page needs to contain U.S.P’s (Unique selling points) and C.T.A’s(Calls to Action) that show the reader why they should call YOU instead of your competitors.  Great calls to action should be featured in strategic places above the fold, utilizing your branding and style color scheme.
4. How do I contact you?  Your phone number needs to be placed at the top right corner of the website, and your email address prominently displayed so the consumer can easily contact you.  Also, the home page of the website must contain the standard “Form box” or side pop out contact form.  These form boxes are standard across many websites.  They typically contain three lines:   Line1 is for the customers Name, Line 2 is for the customers email address, and Line 3 is for the customer to ask a question of you, or request additional information regarding your service and they then submit the form.  The form comes to YOU in an email.  These form boxes represent about 30-60% of total website communication from potential customers. Additionally, it is very important because it allows YOU to capture the potential clients email information as a lead so you can follow up with them.  If a contact form box is not feasible add the pop out contact form plug in that floats along the right hand side of your hero area within your banner images.  Installing a chat feature will also be a very important component to improve your lead conversion and lead flow.  At the end of the day, with 1 Trillion active websites, you need to shout from the mountain tops, that you are open for business, you are welcoming to your customers, and that you are not forcing your customers to dig through your website just to contact you.  If you do not make it easy for your customers to reach you, you will lose your customers in 2016. The days of customers waiting with baited breath hoping and praying you will answer your phone to speak with the customer are long gone.  They do not have to be committed to you.  There are 9 other organic businesses on page 1 of Google, 3-10 Ad words businesses listed on page 1 of Google, and countless social media business listed for them to chose from.  Surely, one of your competitors will make things easy for your customer if you don’t and you won’t be converting website traffic into leads !
5. Are you communicating effectively to your target audience?  This is where most of you completely miss the mark and target with your online business card or website.   When you developed your website, did you design its look, feel, content, layout, and structure with your target audience in mind?  Most business owners design their website with themselves in mind(based on your likes, your color pallet, your design pallet, what you wanted), and in most cases the business owner isn’t their own target audience or target customer. As an example:  If your target customer is under age 35, do you have a chat feature installed?  Do you have a contact form box displayed on your home page?  Have you moved away from copy(written content) on the home page?  If you do have any content, is it written in 3-4 call to action bullet points?  If your target audience is an older consumer, do you have your phone number prominently displayed in the upper right hand corner?  Is your website easy to navigate, is there a proper flow through starting from your home page to your about us page, to your services or products pages and then to contact you?  If there are inconsistencies with the journey, the potential lead will just leave your page, it’s simple.  There are over 1.2 billion websites active online currently throughout the world right now.  If you do not communicate effectively to your target audience, you will lose your leads.  Remember, the main objective is converting website traffic into leads !

For more information on how you can improve your website with converting website traffic into leads , or how you can make a bigger impact within your business market please schedule a consultation. E: info@theadleaf.com | P: 321.255.0900