Alot of small businesses, in my experience, have to fiercely deliberate the notion of hiring someone for their marketing arm, as often their role is tied to generating sales to justify their hire in the first place.
As someone who’s been in the space for over a decade, marketing is a tough gig. It’s often times murky how successful a campaign is, what the longtail effects of a paid ad are, or what that short you shot is going to eventuate into for your next week’s event launch. Numbers can be deceiving, but forking out dollars for someone like myself and then paying a channel like Google or Meta for a slot is another bag on top.
Marketing at it's core is building an authentic relationship between your business and your audience
Distilling marketing down to its core would be this: marketing is telling your story and building an authentic relationship between yourself and your audience. It’s less hard selling, more connection and sharing something worth sharing.
The Almighty Funnel
You share a message one day, you run a campaign another, you post a meme that creates a short, jocular conversation between friends. All your efforts leads your audience downwards into a funnel, and right at the bottom is when they convert into a sale.
And sometimes, the reality is, they never make it down to the bottom of that funnel – and that’s why, consistency in your messaging, consistency in your posting, and, to be honest, consistency in general, is key to success in digital marketing. That, to me, is distilling a decade’s worth of experience down into a singular concept. But of course – here’s two other tips I’ve curated over the years:
Fail fast and iterate faster
- Budget is often a huge factor for small businesses. Don’t be afraid to test and prototype concepts, but if they’re causing you to burn through your funds, pull the plug, debrief and move on
- With the onset of AI giving you a literal digital playground and limitless compute, this has never been easier
Leverage your existing connections
- If you’re starting up a new business or setting up a side gig, draw upon your existing clientele and do a soft-launch by gauging their interest
- You can do this in so many ways, through more obvious means (directly asking them), or generate hype (setup a private mailing list). Depending on how they react, or how many sign up to the list will give you an indication if it’s a torpedo or a Titanic
“consistency in your messaging, consistency in your posting, and, to be honest, consistency in general, is key to success in digital marketing.”
