Why Most Small Business Marketing Feels Overwhelming

We all know that marketing is crucial for any kind of success in business. Marketing enables us to find customers, to encourage people to visit us and to showcase what exactly the business does. Over the last decade, digital marketing has become one of the most efficient ways to market a business because of the cost and reach.

There are numerous digital marketing companies offering their services locally, nationally and globally. The advertising world is one of the most lucrative and because the technological landscape has changed, it makes sense that businesses need help with digital marketing so that they can actually focus on running the business.

Digital marketing uses so many technical terms, that it can seem overwhelming to a lot of people. You have acronyms like SEO, PPC, CTA, CTR, etc. (the glossary of terms is at the end of this post if you need it). Digital marketing firms can handle all of that for you, but obviously that comes at a cost.

But let me tell you a secret…

You can do it all yourself! With barely any stress.

Of course, anything new feels overwhelming but when you’re a small business, you might not have the budget to pump into marketing. The biggest reason to not use a digital marketing company when you’re a small business is that there is no guarantee you will gain anything from it.

Case Study - Small Business Digital Marketing

One business that I worked with needed to increase their sales in a different area of their business. They were already successful in one market, but decided to branch out similarly as their competitors had.

They hired a local digital marketing business and followed their advice, which was a regular monthly amount for six months in order to see any results. Their overall budget was £12,000 for a 12 month period which may not sound a lot to some, but to a small business, can be quite a stretch.

They rebuilt the website in order to be SEO optimised which in itself would be beneficial, and then they would take the analysis from the data to see where to go next.

It all sounded good but here’s what actually happened.

The website build was more complex than they anticipated, it’s a clear virus was given so there was a 3-month delay in the launch.

During that time, they still took the monthly payments, but used it on print media instead to create new cohesive branding.

By the end of the twelve month period, the website was not entirely complete and wouldn’t be as it required extra budget. There were no clear additional sales or enquires. In fact, the website traffic decreased as did the enquiries.

There are a number of free online tools to help with digital marketing and they are all relatively simple to use. If you want to do it yourself, you first need to have a clear overview of your business and your audience.

Social Media

Start by creating social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. Even if you don’t use them, it’s good to have the username saved as your business. It leaves you with the flexibility to post different types on content depending on where your strategy takes you.

The next thing to decide is what type of voice you want to have. If you’re a small business that operates locally, you can be personable and relatable. If you operate internationally, you may want to be more faceless and coperate. Again, it all depends on your intended audience. Who are your customers?

Once you have that, you can start planning content. AI tools like ChatGPT can help you here by coming up with a plan for you. But if you’re against AI, it’s easy to do by yourself too. Try to post 2-3 times a week. The good news is, you can post the same content on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn so you don’t need to vary the post for each platform.

An example week might look like:

• 1 post for your most popular product/service

• 1 post of a useful tip involving your product/service

• 1 post with a customer testimonial

Once you have your plan, you can start creating your content. All you need is your phone and the internet. You can record videos and take photos with your phone. I would then recommend using a platform like Canva to edit them. You can also create content directly in Canva using just graphics if you don’t have photos or videos yet.

Website

After you’ve sorted the socials, you can work on building your website. There are free options like Wix where you can make your website and eventually pay for premium if you want your own bespoke domain. There are so many templates to choose from and all you need to start with is something that explains what you do and what you offer as well as some contact information.

The most important thing to remember when building your website is to use keywords as often as possible in the text. This is what will help search engines like Google understand where to put you.

If you want help with SEO, you can use free tools like Seobility which look at your website and let you know how to improve your SEO score, such as if you need more words on a page, or have too many images, etc.

Mailing List

Once you’ve got your website and your socials, you can build your email list. It’s easiest done through your website if it allows. If not, you can use a free tool like mailchimp. The idea being, people register their interest with you by submitting their email address and then you send out regular newsletters with updates, promotions, etc.

Conclusion

It can all sound overwhelming, but it is entirely up to you how complicated you want it to be. You can build a one-page website, and post once a week with just a photo. Once you’re confident with that, you can branch out.

And of course, if you have the budget, it is easier to let a marketing company do all of this for you. But if you don’t, then I want to reassure you that you can do it without them. Even with them, there’s no guarantees, so if you don’t see a huge influx of customers with what you’re doing, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It can just take some time.

Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms:

• SEO - Search Engine Optimisation (basically trying to rank higher in search engines)

• CPC - Cost per click (how much it costs you when someone clicks on your link)

• PPC - Pay Per Click (advertising where you only pay if someone clicks on your advert)

• CTA - Call To Action (encouraging the user to engage, such as saying ‘buy now’)

• CTR - Click Through Rate (how many people click through the advert as opposed to people that just saw it)