1. Small businesses shouldn’t waste time (or money) on marketing
It comes as no surprise why this may be a misconception amongst small business owners. As a small business owner, you do not have near the generous marketing budget, not to mention the time or resources, of a large corporation. However, this does not mean that you shouldn’t prioritize it for your business.
Marketing for small businesses is inherently more strategic, requiring greater planning to ensure you optimize your budget. It is critical, for small businesses especially, to take the time to piece together a detailed marketing plan to avoid wasting precious cash or time. As your business begins to grow, you’ll find that you have more time and money to dedicate to the marketing process. It’s a long game to play, but you’ll come out a winner in the end.
2. Marketing is the same as advertising
Oftentimes, these two words are used interchangeably. However, marketing and advertising are in fact very different. Advertising is when a company pays for space to promote a product or a service. The ultimate goal of advertising is to reach as many qualified customers as possible. On the flip side, marketing involves a much broader picture of how customers connect with a brand. Marketing looks beyond conversion rates to hone in on retaining the customers they convert from advertising.
To overcome this myth, you need to start with your goal in mind. If you’re looking to promote a sale, new product, or a single feature; you should focus on strategic advertising. If you need to get your brand off the ground, want to set up email-automation, or seek to build a relationship with your audience; you’re in need of marketing services. The best part? BluePrint offers an array of both advertising and marketing services, meaning you can keep costs down with your projects under one roof.
3. Digital Marketing should deliver lightning-fast results
Far too often, businesses new to the digital marketing and advertising space expect results to happen overnight. If you aren’t seeing an immediate return on investment, something must not be working, right? Wrong. Although digitalization does speed up the process of capturing leads, the indecisive consumer still remains the same. It may take many clicks before the consumer decides to call or make a purchase. With that being said, choosing the firm you contract to handle your marketing strategy and paid advertising efforts can be the difference between sending money down the drain or increasing your bottom line. The honest truth is that even instantaneous paid advertising takes time, which needs to be taken into consideration when setting your expectations before moving forward with any firm.
4. What worked for another company will work for us
Some of what you see in the marketing landscape today is a one-size-fits-all approach. Simply put, successful marketing isn’t a copy-and-paste solution for every business. Each business has its own brand, its own messaging, its own products or services, and its own target audience. Your marketing efforts should therefore be unique to your company. Be authentic with your marketing. Truly knowing your audience and your brand messaging is crucial for devising a great marketing strategy tailored to your business. At BluePrint, we craft custom business solutions to ensure that your company isn’t placed into a template that doesn’t match your true brand identity.
5. If you build it, they see it
We can all agree that in 2022, every company needs a website. However, with over 1 billion websites in existence, just having a website is not enough. Although a website may serve well as your online brochure or e-commerce store, many companies offering quality products or services still fall short in providing ways for consumers to find them. A few ways to improve your digital visibility include customer referrals, paid ads, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Customer referrals are one of the most cost-effective methods to bringing people to your website by utilizing your loyal customer base. Paid ads are also a great strategy if you have a larger budget and can utilize strategies like out-of-home advertising, pay-per-click campaigns, or streaming services, to name a few. Lastly, SEO is all about increasing the chances that your website appears when someone searches keywords relevant to your business. Applying best practices like using strong meta tags, image names, page descriptions, and a site map that automatically updates are just a few suggestions to help boost your SEO rankings.
If you’re interested in finding ways to break the mold and improve your marketing & advertising strategy,
get in touch with the BluePrint team today.