Keep it Quiet

How to improve your marketing when your small business is cash-strapped and time poor

If you’re short of time and money, don’t give up on marketing. Marketing is often confused with making a lot of noise. That is a trap which you might fall into if you think that you need to establish a presence on all platforms. If you’re feeling exhausted from trying to promote yourself on all fronts and you truly want marketing to drive your business growth, stop until you’ve read this blogpost.

Shhh!  Keep it quiet, because the best marketing is done in silence.  Stealth marketing doesn’t need to be duplicitous. In silence you can:

1. Listen to what your potential customers are asking for.  Prioritise reading ahead of posting content. That’s the best way to find out about the concerns of your potential customers

2. Make time to consider your market and study to identify their needs.  What challenges might they face next year?

3. Plan to take a strategic, long term approach to building your business.  When you’re preoccupied with creating content, it is difficult to look ahead towards the horizon.  Where do you want to get to?

4. Measure the huge benefit which can be derived from doing no activity for a short time: it allows you to establish a baseline against which you can measure the impact of any future activities.

5. Currently, you can consider withholding activity as a matter of principle.  With social media “there is an ever-present brand image risk, but it would be hard to imagine that the rest of the world is going to heed the ANZA call to drop Facebook”.  One thing is certain: there will be fundamental changes in communications strategy in the year ahead.  If you hold true to the values of pure marketing, you can save time and money.