What traditional small business marketing advice gets wrong (and what to do instead)
In the recent State of Online Business Survey, 27% of respondents cited not having enough clients as their current biggest struggle – not only that, it topped the list by a hefty margin. Cash flow came in with 12% and burnout/mental health at nine percent.
Here’s a line from the report analysis that’s really stuck with me:
“There’s a mismatch between where people are looking for clients and where they actually come from.”
This caught my eye because it reflects what I see at Slow & Steady every day.
Creative small business owners and service providers are often putting their time and effort (see also: feelings!) into the platforms and tactics that aren’t actually where their clients are coming from.
Like the client I had who was writing a newsletter and creating social media content every week, but didn’t convert a single paying client from email or social.
Or the one who spent most of her time in communities and on Instagram even though her last three clients found her through organic search - and when I asked her about it, SEO wasn’t even on her list of ways she was attracting new clients.
Yet marketing’s not a top struggle for online businesses
But even more interesting to me was the stat that only six percent of respondents identified marketing as a top challenge (note: respondents were able to select multiple challenges on the survey).
Because have I got news for you – if you don’t have enough clients, then marketing is a challenge, babe.
I can imagine why folks might not rank marketing as a challenge in this scenario.
If you feel busy marketing your business, if it’s taking up time on your calendar and you’re putting energy into it… If you’re doing all the “right” things you’ve been told that you “have” to do to market your business…
Then of course it’s going to feel like you’ve got a handle on marketing.
Here’s something that we tend to forget, however:
Marketing’s purpose is to drive sales and revenue.
If you’re not converting clients and customers, or you’re not converting enough clients or customers, then you’ve got a leak somewhere in your marketing funnel.
What traditional advice gets wrong
Most traditional small business marketing advice treats marketing strategy like a checklist - just do these things, be in these places and your business will grow.
But what that doesn’t take into account is any consideration for:
Your business model and goals
What you’re already doing
Where your customers are and how they make purchasing decisions
Marketing objectives and how each tactic flows together
Your offers, messaging and positioning
How you want to show up and meet your clients
And on and on and on because there are no one-size-fits all solutions when it comes to marketing.
In other words, it doesn’t teach you how to discern if a specific tactic, strategy or platform is actually right for you and for your business.
Then, when it feels like it’s not working or we don’t have enough clients or we start to have feelings about marketing, the tendency is to just do more.
“I’m just not doing enough.”
Or worse, “I’m just not enough.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are times when you do need to do more marketing! You may need to add in tactics along the funnel or up your frequency/cadence.
But if doing more is just adding to the checklist, without careful consideration for how it fits into the big picture and how it will lead to your goals (i.e. clients, customers, sales, revenue) then it’s unlikely to yield the results you desire.
Because effective marketing leads somewhere – and that somewhere, is sales.
Start with an audit of your current + past marketing activities
So what is the solution? Before you add more to your to-do list, start with a marketing audit:
Make a list of all the ways you are currently marketing your business or have marketed your business over the past 6-12 months and map them to marketing objectives.
The Just Enough framework that I use here at Slow & Steady focuses on four core objectives:
Attraction/Awareness: How are you getting in front of new people and potential customers
Connection: In what ways are you creating an emotional connection and providing the information your potential clients need to discern and decide if your product or service is the right fit for them.
Conversion: Where do sales happen and how do you plan for them?
Delight: What happens after a customer makes a purchase? How are you driving retention, loyalty and referrals?
An effective marketing strategy goes all the way down the funnel - with tactics that hit on each objective and a thread that connects them together so there is a cohesive journey through your marketing.
Identify the gaps + plug the leaks
Now that you’ve laid it all out, you can identify where momentum already exists, where you’ve got gaps to fill or opportunities to leverage – and perhaps most importantly where effort is being spent out of habit rather than impact.
That way you can keep doing what’s effective, adjust what’s leading to a dead-end and let go of what’s draining your time and energy (the fastest way to do less or make your marketing more effective, is to stop doing what doesn’t work).
An audit gives you something better than just a checklist or even motivation: it gives you evidence.
And if you focus on filling the gaps, being intentional about what you add or take away, then chances are you’ll start seeing results.
