As discussed previously, reaching your prospects and customers with your message is today the single greatest ‘cost of doing business’.

If you are a small business, selling to other businesses (B2B) or a professional services firm and even when selling directly to your customers and clients (B2C), then here are our top 11 ways of getting your message to them most cost effectively.

In my past life, when working as a media planner buyer for one of the largest advertising agencies in the country, I quickly realized that when it comes to a media budget - there is never enough money! And I am talking about big national and international brands, with tens of millions of dollars who had to quickly make choices about media channels, geographical markets, length and intensity of their campaigns.

Yet the sad truth is that most small businesses do not plan their promotional budgets with anywhere the same level of professionalism. Even more importantly, the smaller your budget the more creative you have to be with your communication as you don’t have the luxury of being able to drum in your message through the sheer weight of your media budget. And you have to be more vigilant with capturing and analyzing data to understand what works and what doesn’t. 

You will notice that Social Media, the most talked about development in the marketing arena and consumer lifestyle is ‘missing in action’ as a separate point in this list. The reason is simple. Social Media Marketing is so important and so pervasive in attracting customers, that aspects of what is now deemed social media marketing should be present in each of the 11 points below!

• Physical – Dedicated Networking Groups, Industry Associations, Expos, etc
• Virtual (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc)

•  Paid Search / Pay Per Click
• Search Engine Optimization  

The creative strategy is the translation of the brand objectives and attributes,
into communication that will:

• Grab customer Attention,
• Arouse their Interest,
• Stimulate their Desire and
• Prompt them into Action.

Having a strong creative strategy is more important for the SME which doesn’t have the corporate budget to drum in the message using the sheer weight of media dollars. An SME is also in a better position to develop a strong creative strategy:

• Unlike a big corporate organisation, an SME does not have to deal with layers of management and political games.
• In most cases there is no brand baggage.

Creative strategy is rarely used by businesses outside the large and well established Consumer Goods and Services; from FMCG to Banking, Retail, Telecommunications, Cars, etc.  B2B and Professional Services companies, and in fact most SME’s can benefit from having a Creative Strategy.

• Provides consistency which is crucial in building memorability and trust with the target audience
• Ideally, the theme is will be derived from or generate synergy with the brand name or the positioning statement.
• Allows for development of more ‘creative’ communication, which also makes it more memorable. Creative themes achieve this by developing synergy between words and graphics and thus become more memorable.This means that you do not have to expose your target audience to your message as many times as you would otherwise with ‘average’ or less interesting communication, which means you can spend less money communicating with your prospects to turn them into customers.
• Well communicated THEMES deliver greater marketing ROI because they go beyond features and benefits in the mind of the prospect and engage them emotionally as well as logically.

The more creative the communication, the more memorable and comprehensible it is. Which means that you do not have to expose your target audience to your message as many times as you would otherwise with ‘average communication’.

A consistent THEME that uses the name of the brand or its positioning or ultimately both will always yield better results in achieving the above objectives.

MORE CREATIVE = LESS FREQUENCY = GREATER ROI

A 2008 PwC survey “Private Business Barometer IV” paints a depressing yet realistic picture of the Australian small business state of play - about 92% considered cutting their marketing budget. Gregory Will, partner at PwC, rightly points out that these are the very areas that are the source of most small businesses’ competitive advantage. 3 years on and nothing much has changed!

The reality seems to be that we’ve gone from riding on a sheep’s back to acting like them at a time when we need leaders not followers!
You can call farmers “battlers”, but not the majority of SME business owners – their droughts are mostly self inflicted. The following is a statistic I found on the CPA Australia website – 3 years ago -  and it estimated that one in three new small businesses in Australia fail in their first year of operation, 2 out of 4 by the end of the second year, and 3 out of 4 by the fifth year, with only approximately 8% of small businesses succeeding beyond five years.

 Failure to plan is a plan for failure
Conducting a business without a formalised plan is much like trying to drive a car to an unknown destination without a map. Yet the estimates are that only 3% to 5% of Australian small businesses starting from scratch prepare a business and marketing plan; that is, know that their business is feasible and have a formal plan to steer that business towards success. Based on the fact that a Feasibility Study, a SWOT Analysis and a Marketing Plan are a part of any Business Plan, I suggest that approximately 70% of all business failures and almost 100% of lack of business growth are due to inadequate Marketing.

Peter Drucker, the grandfather of modern management said business is about 2 things and 2 things only - innovation and marketing! A number of studies conducted since WWII showed something that marketers have known all along - keep marketing through the downturn. The following quote is from Professional Marketing, Oct-Dec 2008 - article titled “All Hands On Deck”: “…companies that increased marketing spend (relative to market size) during a recession, increased their return on capital employed by 5% in the recovery, compared to a 1% decline for the budget cutters”

Most businesses are either ignorant or choose to ignore the empirical evidence for maintaining or even increasing marketing investment in a weak economy
– Competitors tend to cut spending, creating opportunities
– Maintaining promotional spend will sustain or even grow market share
– Stealing share of mind is a bargain during a recession
– Consumers don’t “go away” during a recession, they become more conservative

For most SME’s marketing is an expense and not an investment.
Most SME business owners do not understand the meaning of marketing or branding let alone have any basic understanding of advertising principles to effectively and efficiently reach their target audience. Much of the SME marketing efforts are wasted anyway - just open your local paper, look into your mailbox and see the standard or the lack of it in SME marketing communication. Only a few weeks ago the ABS released a frightening statistic that 66% of Australian businesses do not have a website!

Attitudes have to change
“Ego and advanced ignorance have killed many a business, and continue to do so. …ignorance is acceptable because it means we don’t know. Advanced ignorance, however, is ‘knowing we don’t know’ and doing nothing about it! It’s deadly….there’s information readily available on every conceivable issue relevant to growing a healthier business, but it’s far easier not to seek anything at all.” Says Brett Lowe of Business Planning Works.

There are businesses still around today, that perceive customer service to be a “Thank You” on the invoice
A study of 460 B2B organizations that employed 100+ people, conducted by Strike Force Sales, found that only 6% of Australian companies pick up the phone and respond to a web generated sales inquiry with a phone call. The MD of the company, Chris Moriarty brings this reality home with another statistic that shows 46% of the time auto-response emails are never followed up.

In the last 5 years, I have met hundreds of SME proprietors and completed over 70 SME marketing projects. I have discussed the SME challenges with colleagues and other consulting professionals and have to say that there are glimmers of hope. These generally lie with the younger more entrepreneurial SME business owners who have grown up on the ‘brand rich media diet’.

There is plenty of professional help out there, admitting you need it, is the hard part…