Marketing Challenges for Your Business
Since neither do you have the current staff expertise, nor do you have the budget for an actual digital marketing expert on staff, Smarter Business Solutions has your answer no matter what your exact need is (almost!).
No Time:
Every business owner I’ve spoken to in the past 7-8 years realizes the shift towards digital marketing is one that should require attention and that they need to pay more attention to it. The right time to take the initiative was yesterday, so today will have to do.
Of course you don’t have the time to add yet another thing to your to-do list. Allow me to leverage my experience and time to allow you to focus on tasks that you feel more comfortable with and where your expertise can be best used.
No Money:
This is a hard one because, yes, my services do cost BUT so does having a tech on staff… so does it to keep the lights on… so does it to keep the yard maintained. Yes, everything costs money. Some things however can make you money or at least provide you the insight required in order to make better decisions on how to spend the money you have.
My business experience coupled with my digital marketing expertise, in your industry, make for the best case scenario. I understand where you can potentially save money and/or identify where your marketing efforts (i.e. Dollars) could be better utilized.
Yes, it does cost to utilize the Smarter Business Solutions services, but your business will be better for it.
No Knowledge:
The ‘blind leading the blind’ isn’t the ideal way to run a business yet I have seen this occur my entire life. Specifically since 2008, I have watched dealers, who don’t really know marketing (especially the sudden shift to digital marketing), simply give instructions to someone without any sort of marketing expertise (knowing how to log into Facebook or modify a website do NOT make for proper qualifications!) about what to do.
Most of the time one of two things happens. One, they do the same thing over and over again since they’ve been doing the same thing forever. Two, they rely on 3rd party vendors/service providers to educate them. Of course the ‘education’ they provide tends to be quite specific to the purchase of more of their products/services.
Hmmm… funny how that would be!?!?
No Strategy:
Throwing ‘crap’ against the fan and seeing what sticks isn’t a strategy. Neither is doing the same thing over and over again because you’ve been doing it for the past 10 years. The problem with most small businesses is that they jump feet first into a course of action without pre-determining which direction to go, or worse yet, if they should be doing anything at all.
Social Media is may be the best, most recent ‘flavour of the month’ example. Most dealers have a Facebook presence and feel that it is important, to varying degrees, so they put a resource in charge of it. So what does being put in charge of me mean? Get ‘Likes’? Get followers? Post every day?
Without a strategy, pretty much anything you do won’t work. Who are you targeting? How are you targeting them? How many different personas should you target? Which personas should you not target and which ones should you target on which Social Media platforms?
All very high-level questions to ask, that beg for an answer but require a great depth of knowledge and analysis than the average small business can deal with.
No Budget:
Yes, proper marketing takes money. Undoubtedly your budget will be thrown a bit of a loop when you invest in my services, BUT, what an investment isn’t meant to be instantaneous. It’s meant to pay dividends over and over again in the future.
Making your business smarter WILL make your business better. Spending to make it smarter is just part of the equation to be successful.
No Starting Point:
Well the simple answer is TODAY is your starting point, but the depth of answer is more than that. Very few small businesses have any sort of historical reference in regards to how they got to where they are today. Sure they know how many units they sold last year versus the year previous, but that is simply the final data point. What led to those X number of units being sold? Why did you sell X when you could have sold Y?
The collection of proper data is hard BUT it is required in order to make better decisions on how to progress forward. The data you collect starting now IS your starting point. Through Smarter Business Solutions I will make sure that you are set up for the future and not scrapping by day to day.
Future Goals/Client Retention:
What are your sales goals? How are you going to hit your goals? How is what you do today going to help you hit your goals 3-5 years from now?
The answer is really a series of markers such as analytics, strategy, data collection, knowledge and time. All things you are probably short on with regards to digital marketing and how it will drive your business.
Smarter Business Solutions (SBS) wants to be the key cog that helps drive your business. I want to not only help you maximize your sales today but make sure that the customers you worked so hard to get 1, 2, 3, 6, 10 years ago, want to come back and deal with you again. And don’t kid yourself… just doing a good job with a customer 5 years ago has a lot less impact on their buying decision today than you think.
Let SBS build the strategy and lay out the plan to make sure that a customer that buys from you once, does it again and again.
Lack of Advocacy:
In a lot of cases, dealers rely on doing the exact same thing they’ve been doing for years and since the marketplaces/3rd party vendors they use to sell their inventory have a bunch of stats to throw at them, they tend to just go with what their account manager says until the budget is simply tapped out.
SBS has one goal. Make your business smarter so you can be a better business. When you’re a smarter, better business, you then have the ability to make more strategic marketing decisions. With my level of knowledge and understanding of how these external vendors/services work, I can help steer you in the direction that best suits your business because I work for YOU!! I’m your advocate!!