What’s your marketing WHY? How to focus your small business marketing – and achieve results

Something I’ve learned in my 15+ years of marketing experience (not a brag, just an empirical fact!) is that people who aren’t marketing specialists often come with a predetermined idea of marketing assets they need, without knowing why it is they need them.

The myth of the humble flyer in small business marketing

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve been asked to get a flyer designed. Look – I have nothing against flyers per se, but why is it that they are so popular? Can you remember the last time you took a flyer and actually did something because of it?

Just go to any conference or gig and you will find the nearby bins full of them!

And when they arrive through your letterbox, what do you normally do with them?

In our house, we leave them ‘on the side’ for a while, and eventually they go into the recycling. I always think that I’m going to call that tree surgeon or gutter-clearing company, but I never do (I find myself needing more authority, and Googling local companies to find the best rated ones).

Flyers are great business for print companies, but are they really great business for you?

I wonder whether the companies behind these flyers have really asked the number one most important question: WHY are we producing these?!

It’s a classic symptom of the cart leading the horse…or the tail wagging the dog.

I presume the driving idea might go something like this:

I want to sell more product / services, so a flyer will help me do that.

Let’s unpack this.

Are we really suggesting that a potential customer will see your flyer and consider buying your product straight away? Think back to what I wrote earlier on: is that the effect that flyers have on you, as a consumer?

And by blanket dropping flyers into every local home, who are you targeting? It’s basically following the concept that by throwing enough sh*t at the wall, some will stick.

Imagine this is your marketing funnel and your business is the ship

Introducing the idea of a marketing funnel

It really has to do with your customer journey, or marketing funnel – which includes a number of touchpoints.

Those are the names for strategically marketing your business, and how you develop those potential customers from awareness to consideration to purchase and finally to loyalty.

Making a flyer is just one of a broad number of marketing tactics that helps generate awareness.

But the idea that one flyer will actually produce paying customers is surely a myth. You may get lucky and get the odd person checking out your website or social media channels – but these are likely to be a lucky one-off.

Does creating awareness for your business feel like shouting into a void?

Creating awareness of your business

So when you’re having that idea to make a flyer, what you’re really saying is that you want people to be aware of your business.

But crucially that flyer needs to be paired with other awareness-generating activities in order to be effective. Because how the marketing funnel really works is a bit different for everyone, and we need to make sure that there are multiple touchpoints for people.

When I say ‘touchpoints,’ these might mean that someone sees a social post, a paid social post, a Google Ad, a LinkedIn ad, checks out the website, sees another social post, sees the paid ad for the 10^th time – everyone’s journey is different, and to cut through the noise you do need multiple touchpoints where a user is seeing your message.

Stages and activities of a marketing funnel

Here’s a rough overview of the sort of marketing activities that make up each stage of your marketing funnel:

1.      AWARENESS: to attract a broad audience and make them aware of your brand

Ø  Social media advertising: collect lead info

Ø  Thought leadership articles & blogs

Ø  Sponsoring industry events

Ø  A google ad

2.      INTEREST: capture contact info from interested prospects

Ø  Creating a landing page with lead magnet, like a free guide or e-book, in exchange for their email address.

Ø  Encouraging prospects to sign up for a free webinar or newsletter (with a value exchange)

3.      CONSIDERATION: To nurture leads and show them how your solution can solve their problems.

Ø  Sending personalised email sequences with case studies, comparison guides, or ROI calculators.

Ø  Having the sales team reach out to qualified leads via phone or email to schedule a demo

Ø  Email marketing: send regular communications, each with an easy action to take from it – like a planned customer journey.

4.      DECISION/PURCHASE: To convert a qualified lead into a paying customer.

Ø  Providing a free trial or a personalised product demonstration.

Ø  Having sales representatives close the deal by walking the prospect through the payment and subscription process.

5.      LOYALTY / RETENTION: To keep customers happy and encourage repeat business.

You’ve worked hard to get this customer – so it’s worth putting in the effort to keep them happy = repeat sales.

Ø  Providing onboarding support.

Ø  Offering exclusive content or loyalty programs.

Ø  Implementing customer success outreach to ensure they are getting value from the product.

"Hey, look at the flyer I've just designed!"

How to start marketing your business with your WHY

The best place to start is with your why: why do you want to do a flyer, email, video? Where does it get you within your customer journey funnel?

When you think, ‘we need a flyer for this!’ are you thinking about the why, or are you defaulting to your autopilot marketing mode?

People don’t love feeling like they’re being sold to – they want you to solve their problem and make their life easier!

Put the customer’s problem first and then how we’ll solve it for them – rather than simply tell them what we do.

Thinking strategically can have genuinely impactful change on your marketing

An example of a good small business marketing funnel

Here’s an example of what a nice marketing funnel might look like. Let’s say you’re a small business that offers a service, like aesthetics, roofing, or even accountancy.

AWARENESS: You’re the subject expert, so write about things you know about to position yourself as a thought leader, either on your website’s blog (which you can share on your Google Business listing) or LinkedIn – these will help improve your SEO.

INTEREST: place paid Google, Bing and social media marketing ads, or organic socials, drive users to a lead capture landing page form with a short, free guide or toolkit.

CONSIDERATION: now that you have a person’s email address, design a pre-planned email journey for people who sign up for the free guide. This will give them additional, helpful content – and could lead to a free webinar on a helpful topic (a special VIP benefit to those who have signed up for the free guide).

DECISION: Perhaps you can personally email or call those people with invites to a free 30 min Teams consultation. This is a chance to speak to them directly and you might get a much better response to selling face to face.

LOYALTY / RETENTION: how are you communicating with people who have bought products from you – are you keeping them warm? You’ve put a lot of work into getting them as a contact, so don’t waste it by forgetting about them! And you need to make sure that all of your past customers are leaving you nice reviews – that’s so effective for small business marketing!

POV: you're counting all your profits from getting better ROAS and having a marketing funnel in place

Starting with your WHY helps focus your business - and get you better return on your spend

There’s a lot to think about here, but essentially what it all boils down to is this: avoid thinking about your marketing activities in isolation. They need to work together!

And if you do that, and plan your marketing properly, you'll see a change in your bottom line: that's return on spend, and profit.

It'll help you avoid feeling like all you do is throw money at your marketing with few results.

So in conclusion, yes – do design that flyer, but also make sure that you're running print and digital ads, posting on social media, writing blog posts, developing your customer journey…

Need some help with your small business marketing?

I’m here to help small business owners lighten the load and get results. Just drop me a message and let me help you get where you want to be.