Match your marketing to your resources
Julia Becker Collins
I was doing an online live workshop recently, and in advance of it, I ran a poll to see what additional topics people wanted me to cover during the Q&A sections. The winner? By a landslide: What kind of marketing is the best use of my resources?
Every decision in business is about using your limited resources to gain the best results, and it’s a concern every company faces; but one impacting smaller and medium businesses the most. Let’s break down what decisions you need to make in your marketing to best use your limited resources.
Understanding your resources
First, it’s important to know what’s on the line. Your resources are finite, and they are different from everyone else’s – even your competitors. It’s important not to fixate on any single one and understand the resources you take for granted might be your most valuable ones.
Money: The first on everyone’s mind
Money – profits, gross income, overhead, budgets, etc. – are the first and foremost for many businesses, especially when the owner handles the financials. How much you can budget to marketing – from running ads to outsourcing work – contributes to the scale and scope but may not be your biggest resource risk.
Time: The most valuable resource
However, owners overlook the time investment marketing can be. Most marketing fails not because of mismanagement or bad planning, but because companies don’t have the time to sustain it. If your marketing goals and plans are larger than the time you and your staff can devote to it, it will be DOA.
Expertise: Changes how to handle marketing
Lastly, a big modifier to your marketing will be the experience and expertise of your marketing department. If you want to write blogs, do you have someone with the experience to write engaging and SEO-friendly content and understand your products? Is the owner willing to associate their face with their brand? What sets you apart from your competition that you can capitalize on?
Answering marketing questions
Next, it’s important to answer some questions about your marketing goals. Stepping away and being able to look at hard questions and answers can give you a better idea on what your true goals are.
• What are your business goals?
• What is your marketing trying to achieve?
• Who does your company serve?
• Where do they make their buying decisions?
Branding: Keep your eyes on the prize
Besides inaction, the other major waste of resources is due to chasing trends. Have friends telling you that Instagram is where it’s at? That doesn’t mean your business can thrive or even survive there. It’s important to focus on your business goals and find the marketing solutions tailored to meet that goal you can support with your limited time, budget, and expertise. Don’t chase things for the sake of being new, but only if they align with your needs and abilities.
The resources, needs, and marketing of every business are different. What’s important is you lay the groundwork by assessing your resources and marketing environment to know where your efforts are best spent. Start with these ideas, weight your resources, and plan out your marketing by answering the right questions.
Julia Becker Collins is the chief operating officer at Westborough digital marketing agency Vision Advertising. She can be reached at julia@vision-advertising.com.
WBJ Web Partners
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