Anna Duin’s Post

Transcript

Here are three mistakes you are probably making as a small to medium sized business owner when it comes to your marketing channels. Number one, you are probably not getting enough help vetting channels, meaning choosing which channels are right for your business, your industry, your space you know you're doing. Tick tock because you read somewhere that you should do tick tock or you think it's the thing to do. You're, you're picking channels at random because you see the big brands doing it because you just feel like it's a good thing to do. It's what you associate with marketing. So that's number one. You're not getting help vetting or choosing your channels. And the risk with that, of course, is that especially if you are busy small business like leader who isn't, you have way more important things that you should be spending your time on. So one of the best investments you can make. In your marketing early on is to actually sit and get like help figuring out what channels are right for you at that time. And those channels change overtime depending on like your needs, your revenue, the size of the brand and so on. So that's one of the very first things you can do. You can work with a fractional CMO, a contractor, a freelancer, but somebody who knows enough about marketing like broadly who has experienced specifically working with small, medium sized businesses, with startups. Who can help you just talk through, yes, it makes sense for you to test that and no it doesn't. Here's channels that might get you to your goals faster. So number one, get more help vetting the actual channels and then #2 don't try to run them all yourself. I get it, like you want to try like everything. You want to do everything you can to build your business and that makes sense. But unless you have in-house marketers or trusted like contract marketers that you're working with on a regular basis, chances are you are trying to do too much. Been spreading yourself to like wide and not doing a great job of at each channel instead of just really honing in on like a few things like e-mail marketing are really having like a great website or having a really strong LinkedIn presence or whatever, or really focusing on the couple of events that drive the most revenue for you rather than trying to do like 30 different channels at once. I was talking to a guy working in a finance the other day and she was saying, oh, you know, I'm, I should be setting up a TikTok. She's a, a solo preneur. Of one there's there's no reason to drum up her her business on TikTok unless she's already doing that likes it is passionate about it. She's not a social media person. There are way better channels for her to invest in to find people looking for her bookkeeping services. And the third one so #1 vet your channels get help getting your channels from somebody who knows what they're doing who has experience across marketing use a great consultant advisor work with somebody like me who has lots of. Experience specifically working with small businesses and startups because they'll be able to help you prioritize your budget and your effort rather than just saying, oh, you need to have a massive retainer with a marketing agency and we'll do it all for you and that's not a good use of your investment. Number 2, when you are ready to invest in those channels, get somebody who knows what you're doing running them. The same gal I was talking to and finance had been trying Google ads for her business and she was saying they weren't working and I was asking her about what she was doing. Why they weren't working and she said, well, you know, I've been running that said, well, do you have any background in Google ads? Like why? Why do you think they're not working? She said, no, no, I've never done it before, but I know they're not working for me. It's not a good channel for my business. I said, no, you don't you know that you shouldn't be running your Google ads because you're not a marketer. You have no experience in Google ads. And those are two very different things. One is the distinction about does this channel work for my business? And 1 is a distinction about, hey, I shouldn't be the run running the channels. My third piece of. Devices, if you do not have a big budget, if you do not have a lot of in-house support, if you do not have lots of marketers you're working with already, really prioritized. Don't try to be on 15 different social media platforms that may or may not drive you revenue. Do your research on the front end, find a couple of key channels and then really invest in those and prioritize those until you are ready and have more help to outsource and to go broader. Hope that helps.