Uncertainty. Apprehension. Exhaustion. These are the three words that keep rearing their head when anyone mentions small business sentiment as we enter our third year of managing a business through a pandemic.
When making decisions for your firm, you may find that a lot of the COVID induced rules and restrictions fall largely out of your jurisdiction. However, one thing we do have absolutely control over is how we steer our firms through these rather unchartered waters.
Right now, you may feel that you need to hit pause on any progress related activity, such as marketing. You need to just focus on surviving each day.
However, history has shown us that in fact, now it’s more important than ever to ensure that you are prioritising your marketing. By continuing to promote your firm and your areas of expertise during the pandemic, you increase your share of voice. This simply means that you become louder and more visible than your competitors during this time. So not only do you make yourself more known to clients who are looking for your services now, but when the pandemic is over or consumer sentiment starts to rise, it’s your voice that they have been listening to and that gives you a huge competitive advantage.
And if that is not enough to convince you to invest in your marketing in 2022, here are ten other good reasons to consider.
Reason #1 – Marketing helps clients find you.
If people don’t know your firm exists, they can’t buy from you. Even with the cloud of COVID hanging persistently over our heads, people continue to buy houses. People continue to get into disputes. Companies are being set up. Wills still need to be written. These people all need legal and conveyancing services. If they don’t know that you exist, they’ll simply head to your competition.
Reason #2 – Marketing can help create an emotional connection with your customer.
Your brand and your firm represent so much more than your physical being. There are clients who feel an emotional attachment to your brand and if they don’t, you want them to. Brand positioning is the spot in the mind of our consumers that we want to own. So, when they encounter your brand, we want them to think certain thoughts or feel a certain way. It’s a subconscious effect, but ever-so important.
If your clients can connect with your offering on an emotional level (trust, assurance, confidence, relief), you have a lot more chance of them recalling your brand, talking about your brand to others and best of all, becoming loyal to you and your brand.
Reason #3 – Marketing helps customers understand why they should pick you instead of your competitors.
What makes you different? Why should customers choose you as opposed to your competitors? Marketing can help communicate these key messages with clarity and consistency.
Reason #4 – Having an awesome brand can inspire your team.
Notice how proud people who work with Google or Apple seem to be. That’s because they work for awesome brands that are leaders within their field. The brands are instantly recognisable, and they represent progressive and innovative thinking, global reach, and incredible opportunity. So, what do you think that says about the people that work there? That’s right – they must represent that too. Imagine if your employees were that loud and proud to work for your brand. And with the ‘Great Resignation’ on our doorstep for 2022, there’s never been a more important time to pull out all the stops to motivate and inspire your existing employees.
Reason #5 – Marketing drives leads.
Leads can be converted to sales- IF they are the right kind of lead. You can use your marketing to communicate exactly who you are perfect for. Your marketing messages can communicate exactly what you do and, what you don’t. This helps sort the wheat from the chuff. There’s no point in driving a drove of people who are simply not right for your business to enquire with you. It’s a waste of your time, and theirs.
Reason #6 – Marketing increases sales.
I’m not sure I’ve ever worked with a small business who hasn’t wanted to increase their sales at some point in the business journey! How is your marketing helping you to increase your sales though? Are your conversion points such as your website and the people in your business optimised to sell? There’s no point driving really great potential clients to your website or to call you, only to have them turned off by a rude receptionist or land on a website that confuses them.
Also, be sure to have some marketing in place that focuses on driving repeat sales from existing and past customers. Email marketing can be used effectively here.
Reason #7 – Marketing can help to even out sales peaks and troughs.
Every business has them. Peaks and troughs can cause chaos with resource planning, cash flow etc. We would be naive to think that we can completely change people’s behaviour enough to work around our business and purchase our product whenever we need them to – without giving them good reason to!
If you know a certain period of the year is quiet, you can create marketing campaigns to help influence sales around those times or introduce sales / products that might be more suitable to the customer then. Alternatively, you can use your marketing to further amplify sales in peak periods to cover you over the trough periods.
Reason #8 – Smart marketing can save you money.
Running expensive advertising campaigns on channels that your target audience don’t tune into or that don’t do a good job of communicating your messaging or call to actions can be a very, very expensive exercise! We have saved small businesses thousands of dollars simply by directing their advertising to targeted channels and tightening up their Ad creative.
Reason #9 – Marketing can help you get to know your customer better.
The insights that we can collect via digital marketing channels are AH MAZE ING!! By just having a well populated Facebook page, we can access insights about our Facebook community’s demographics. By posting certain content and running certain ad campaigns we can gauge their enthusiasm for certain messaging, images, or offers that we run etc.
Customer surveys are also a hard and fast way of gathering key consumer insight.
All under the heading of marketing!!
Reason #10 – Marketing is fun!
Who doesn’t want to spend time creating ideas that convert people into paying customers. The rush of adrenalin when you witness a digital marketing campaign nail it, when you hear a prospective client tell you that your radio ad campaign inspired them to pick up the phone to you. It’s so rewarding to get to know your customers better and to create a brand that gets the whole company energised and excited.
While the uncertainty caused by the pandemic will remain as a persistent challenge for us to overcome in 2022, there are many things we can control, such as marketing, to ensure that our business prospers. Whether it’s creating more opportunities to have fun and energise your team, drive more sales, or achieve more efficiencies in your business, you now have ten very good reasons to invest the time and / or the money into marketing in 2022.
To learn more about how to grow your small business with strategic and clever marketing solutions that deliver results, listen to; The How to do Marketing Show – a no-nonsense podcast about small business marketing. Click here for more details.
