Small business owners understand that marketing their products or services sometimes feels like an uphill battle. On top of all the work you and your team do every day, trying to come up with new, fresh ideas and solutions for your marketing is time-consuming and exhausting. And you might feel like you waste an enormous amount of time and money only to be defeated by the same challenges again and again.
In this blog, we’ll explore the four main challenges small businesses face with their marketing. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel—we’ll provide a comprehensive solution, too.
Challenge #1: Understanding Your Audience
You’ve heard it time and again—know your audience. Know who you’re selling to. Create a persona. It’s all true, but it’s harder than it looks. You may feel a distinct tension between your current audience and your ideal audience. Or you might feel like you have to be all things to all people to get just one person through the door.
Whoever your audience is, they want to know that you truly understand them and can speak to their pain points. But without a clear framework to talk about their problems, this is hard to do. They come to you because your product or service is a potential solution to a problem they face.
Why it’s a challenge: If your audience doesn’t feel understood by you, they’ll check out quickly.
Read more about understanding your audience:
Challenge #2: Standing Out in a Saturated Market
Your audience is barraged by thousands of messages every day—Instagram ads, billboards, TV spots during their favorite shows, you name it. That can be difficult to make your brand memorable, especially if you’re a small business with no budget to purchase expensive TV spots.
It can be tempting to just throw something at the wall and see what sticks, but that’s a recipe for confusing your potential audience. The only thing that will cut through the noise of a saturated market is a clear message that resonates with your audience.
Why it’s a challenge: Attempting to stand out in a saturated market by posting gimmicky TikTok videos, sending one flash-sale promotional email, or spending thousands on a billboard—without a clear story or message tying these elements together—is a recipe for an ineffective, forgettable brand.
Read more about standing out to your audience:
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Challenge #3: Maintaining a Consistent Brand Message
Speaking of multiple platforms, it’s really difficult to keep a message clear and consistent across multiple platforms and channels. Mixed messages can make your brand less powerful and more generic. What you say on your website should be similar to the language you use in emails, social media posts, and even physical marketing pieces like postcards and billboards. Most small businesses don’t have the time to create a comprehensive strategy that takes all of these factors into account, let alone create a consistent brand message that everyone can get on board with.
Why it’s a challenge: Different messages on different channels can dilute your brand identity and lead to confusion. It’s also time-consuming to develop a slew of different messages.
Read more about brand messaging:
Challenge #4: Building a Digital Marketing Funnel
While similar to a sales funnel, a digital marketing funnel can become complex if you don’t know what piece goes where. Which piece of the funnel will have the best ROI? Is social media the magic bullet that will bring clients in? Will search engine optimization finally get you the leads you’re looking for? No one item in the funnel is going to help you reach your sales goals, but a comprehensive funnel will.
Why it’s a challenge: Trying to DIY a digital marketing funnel can result in a lot of wasted time and effort—not to mention frustration when leads don’t convert.
Read more about digital marketing funnels:
A Comprehensive Solution
We told you we’d have a comprehensive solution at the end of this blog, so if you’re feeling down and out about the challenges above, prepare to have your mind blown.
You can have the solution to all four of these digital marketing challenges in one day.
Hughes Integrated has a special event coming up soon, and we don’t want you to miss it. We’ll be announcing the big event very soon, but until then, here’s a sneak peek AT what you’ll learn during this one-day event:
- How to use a clear framework to solve your marketing challenges—that you can start using right away
- Identify the issues that matter to your audience
- Develop a clear, consistent message and effective marketing collateral.
You don’t want to miss this announcement! Sign up for our email list to be notified as soon as we drop the big news.
