The Small Business Marketing Gap
by Lucy Schultze
In this blog series, we’re delving into the marketing and communication needs that we hear about most from new clients. This is among the most common, and for good reason: Many small- to medium-sized businesses need marketing and communications that is more than zero, but less than a full-time hire.
How you can market your business
Businesses and organizations look to fill this gap in different ways:
Internships: When it comes to social media management, hosting an intern offers a budget-friendly way to engage more with your audience. It allows you to extend what your team can handle, while also giving a student valuable experience. Some of the downsides, however, can include the amount of time you must spend directing the intern, and the lack of a big-picture strategy that carries over from one semester to the next. Particularly for projects like website development, organizations often find themselves left with a half-finished project when an intern’s time at your organization is over.
Spreading the load: As an organization grows, its need to communicate with its audience grows, too. Existing staff can step up and learn new skills with the help of in-person workshops or online guides and tutorials. Some of the best platforms today — including those for website development and email marketing — make it easy to dive in without technical expertise. Challenges can emerge when marketing or communications duties are not part of anyone’s actual job description. It is easy for those duties to take a back seat when other priorities are more pressing. Efforts can feel fragmented or inconsistent, and details can fall through the cracks.
Occasional creative outsourcing: Organizations managing their communications in-house can reach out to independent contractors to extend their capabilities when they have a need. Talented specialists can include writers, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, SEO specialists, web-development specialists, podcast producers and more. Referrals from fellow business owners or organization leaders can go a long way toward identifying specialists who can deliver quality work, meet deadlines and charge fairly. In some cases, however, the downside can be investing in high-quality content but not having a solid plan to maximize its value and reach your audience.
It is not only businesses that struggle with finding the right marketing balance. Local governments, nonprofits, university departments — virtually every time people come together to achieve a goal — will need solid, efficient ways to get their message out to the audience they are trying to engage.
“An agency can translate goals into strategies, plans and action.”
How an agency can market your business
Businesses and organizations that find their needs are more significant than what they can handle in-house can partner with a marketing agency to extend and accelerate their efforts. From our own experience at Red Window Communications, here are some of the needs an agency can fill for such clients:
Support for growing startups: In an organization’s early stages, it’s common that the owner or leader takes on the entirety of external communications efforts. But as the organization grows, there comes a point when it is too big a job. An agency can come alongside startup founders to amplify their capabilities and allow them to focus on their business, while solving problems and working toward their goals.
Expertise in applying tech tools: Tools like Google search marketing and social media are among the most cost-effective ways to reach today’s audiences. An agency brings strategy and experience to make the best use of such tools, ensuring they are integrated with a client’s broader plan, and devising approaches that are sustainable for the client’s needs and budget.
Strategic planning plus follow-through: Part of the benefit of bringing on a team is gaining access to both big-picture and detail-oriented perspectives. Good ideas are half the battle; the other half is ensuring that those ideas are executed in a consistent, high-quality way. An agency can translate goals into strategies, plans and action.
Advantage of an outside perspective: It is always challenging to have an objective view of your product, service, mission or organization. You have a deep understanding of what you offer. But what does it look like through the eyes of your audience? What other options are they considering, and how will they find and choose you? An external agency perspective can give you fresh insights on their motivations, both from research and from search-data trends, to make your outreach as strategic as possible.
Embedded communications support: Like an in-house marketing department without the payroll and expenses to match, an agency partner gets to know your team and learns all about what you do and how you work. In contrast to one-size-fits-all marketing solutions, the agency’s goal is to fit its efforts into the client’s needs and budget, rather than the other way around.
Bridge the marketing gap for your small business
Get access to the diverse skills of the team at Red Window Communications. We can design a fully integrated program around your goals, with ongoing support and services that start around the cost of a part-time hire.
