Marketing: Many small businesses are painfully unaware of how critical this is to their businesses. Many, if not most, simply rely on what everyone else is doing in order to get the word out about their business. Typically, that means YellowPages and/or local newspapers. With 80% of American households turning to the search engines for local business results, it’s time for small businesses to get hip to the web jive.
1) Why cutting the marketing budget can absolutely crush your small business.
It’s a recession. Historically, recessions force businesses to cut costs. This is where problems begin to arise. Many small businesses decide that the first cost needing to be cut is the marketing budget. THIS IS THE WORST THING ANY BUSINESS COULD DO! Sorry for the caps, but that needed to be shouted. Notice how big business does things. They cut jobs, reduce manufacturing, tighten their product focuses…but they don’t touch their marketing budget. Why? Because marketing is the act of finding, engaging, and creating customers. Advertising is only part of the equation, but it’s a big part. Without customers, there is no business. Period! So why do some small businesses cut that out of their expenses?
I would venture to say that there are two reasons. First of all, the traditional advertising outlets for small businesses have been paper oriented, with long-term contracts and publishing dates that aren’t “Today”. Secondly, unless a small business has a system in place to track conversions from their advertising outlets, there really isn’t any way of knowing how well or poorly a businesses advertising is doing. This means that unless there is a special tracking system in place, any YellowPages/paper, billboard, TV, or radio advertising is not being tracked. Without knowing how well or poorly an advertising outlet is performing, there’s no wonder that the advertising budget gets cut first.
