97% of businesses in New Zealand are classified as a “small business”.
If you’re reading this, you probably know that small businesses are normally run by he owner, who is also the founder.
This person has taken on significant risk (and stress) to grow their business into something they can be proud of.
If you’re the owner of a small business, and it’s anything like the small businesses we’ve come across in our journey, my guess is that you’ve got a small team together (1 – 10 additional staff), but you’re still juggling the “extras”.
You’ve likely hired someone to actually do the core work of your business, and maybe an admin or accounts person.
However, there are a few areas where you’re the one in charge of it all, and, let’s be honest, these areas don’t get as much attention as you would like because they sit outside of your core expertise.
You’re ticking along ok – things could be better, but they could also be worse.
You’d like to optimise certain areas of your business and have someone take these roles away from you so you can spend more time focused on the core business, but you’re stuck.
You don’t have enough finances to allow you to take a risk and hire a new employee that might not work out at all, but you need someone to come in so you can generate more funds, so you can hire someone to come and help…
My guess is that you’re still reading because I’ve just described your situation perfectly.
I can also guess that marketing is one of these areas where you kind of look after it, but it doesn’t really get any attention, and you know your business would thrive if you made it a focus.
You’re not alone.
There are over 590,000 other small businesses in New Zealand.
It’s pretty safe to assume that at least half of these businesses are in the same situation.
That’s 249,999 other owners out there who feel your pain and frustration.
But what can you do about this?
Most people go out and hire a “marketing agency” to help them.
Maybe it’s running ads.
Maybe it’s SEO, or something else.
Whatever it is, they put feelers out, asking for recommendations for a specific marketing outlet and pray that whatever they do is going to be the magic bullet that fixes everything in their business.
Then they realise this method doesn’t work, so they put marketing in the “too hard” basket and carry on business as normal.
Here’s the thing;
The reason businesses don’t get any traction this way is that they assume a specific marketing outlet (ads or set, etc.) is what they need, when no market research has been done to understand their audience.
And research takes too long – especially when they’re running a business – so they move on.
We’ve found, in almost all cases of clients we’ve helped, that either ads are the completely wrong marketing method for them and their target audience, or they’re not running the correct ads based on their target audience.
In all of our years helping businesses, we have only recommended running a digital advertising campaign on 2 occasions, and 1 further instance that we got the client to continue running ads, but had them modify their approach to ads slightly.
But a busy owner doesn’t have the time to put in the work required to audit, research, and develop a brand new marketing strategy.
You don’t have a spare $150k/year to hire a new chief marketing officer who can look after this for you.
So, you try a new ads specialist or lead generation expert.
Neither of which actually tries and find out about your business, or target market, before “working” for you.
There are no “quick fixes” in good, sustainable, long-term marketing.
Good marketing is actually really simple.
It just takes time.
Good marketing is about 3 very simple things:
1. Understand your business and your competitors inside out.
2. Understand your target market better than they understand themselves
3. Speak to your target market about your business and how you can help them in a method that’s easiest for them to digest communication, and use the messaging they will most relate to.
But this takes time.
You don’t have time.
There is, however, another option.
Bring someone in to take the marketing plate off your hands, without the expense associated with recruitment, training, and a full time salary.
Actually, scrap that…
Bring an entire team in to take care of your marketing, without those associated expenses, and freeing up your time to focus on more important things.
Without going too much into it (I’m sure you can look through our website or get in touch if you want more details), we act as your entire marketing department (MDaaS).
We have the expertise required and take the time needed to really understand everything you need to be doing marketing-wise.
And then, we go and implement it for you.
No more financial worries.
No more shooting in the dark.
No more stress about how to grow.
If you’re a small business owner (which I assume you are if you’re still reading), let us take some of that burden you’re carrying and help you in your business.
