In the midst of holiday gift-buying and the ease of sites like Amazon, it’s important to remember how vital small businesses are.
I’ll just come out and say it: I love small businesses. I love working with them. I love working for them. And, I also love shopping with them. I love helping them succeed.
Call me crazy but there’s something special about looking a person in the eye who genuinely NEEDS your business and CARES that you’re there. Having worked in and with small businesses my whole life, I can fairly say that they are the hardest working people. Their passion is really in the work.
What Small Businesses Need and Don’t Usually Get
If you have a small business, you need people in the door, visits to your website, or phone calls coming in. Unfortunately, competing with the big guys can make this vital step incredibly hard. Small business owners will work night and day. They’ll show up anywhere and anytime to hustle and make it work. I just came back from a market where the owner had her entire family working other markets as well as her brick and mortar store. It truly takes a village. So what do they need? They need people to know they exist. They need marketing! Most of the time, small businesses solve countless problems people are having. While we’re asking Alexa and Googling questions, these small shops and services already have the answer.
How Do They Do It, Get It, Work It?
Business owners will dive in, head first, figuring out how to make their business succeed. Oftentimes, they’ll muddle through, with very little guidance. Already being resourceful people, they’ll pick up what they can, where they can. Some are amazing at this. Some…not so great (it’s not your fault!) This is where I love to get involved. In fact, I sometimes have to hold myself back from offering up my services to every struggling business I see. I never want anyone to feel as if they’re not doing a good job. The truth is: they’re doing an AMAZING job–they just can’t be amazing at everything! Truly successful marketing requires a strategy and a plan, and small businesses just don’t have the time to do that. They need to asses what is working and what isn’t and figure out a path on how to get there. I feel like I can speak to this ESPECIALLY because I’m a small business owner, too and I spend most of my time working on making others succeed. I’ll be so busy strategizing another’s success that I’ll forget I need to stay on target, too!
What Are Some Basic, Beginner Marketing Steps?
As much as we want you to hire us to do your strategy, content and marketing, we know you might not be ready yet. In the meantime, there are few things you can do, all on your own, to get started:
- Get your business listed on Google My Business and Bing Places
- Get on Hootsuite and schedule your social media ahead of time (Oh, you’re not on social media? Please do that, too.)
- Make sure you have some clear and attractive business cards. I recommend Greenerprinter for the most gorgeous and environmentally-friendly ones.
- Don’t be shy! TALK TO PEOPLE about your business.
- If you don’t have a website, GET ONE. And, hire us to write your content for you (nudge nudge…see what we did there?). Don’t forget to get an SSL for your site. Security is more and more important to online visitors.
Caring DOES Matter
I’m working with an online retailer and checking to see how many orders have come in over the past few days. A lag in sales means to me that I need to do something different. I’m working with an educational resource who’s seeing a dip in visits. I think: I need to re-assess the keywords we’re using and maybe amp up their blogging. In my world, my client’s success is my success. I take the success of the small businesses I work with to heart and see it all as one big puzzle that needs to be solved. “How do we do this and do it right for you?” I love seeing passion and dedication in small business owners and it inspires me to make their dream possible.
Now…what can we do for you?
5 Comments
Comments are closed.