8 Questions to Think About Before Marketing Your Small Business

Marketing is continuous. You can’t possibly and don’t need to do everything tomorrow. Before you do begin — answer these questions:

1. What are your goals?
   What do you want to achieve in the first month and the first 6 months? When you’re wearing every hat and doing a million things, the time will fly. It’s important to set a few goals before you begin, officially, and check in on them every 2 weeks. This way you can understand the results of your efforts, and stay aligned. If you are spending time on activities that don’t lead to your goals, consider making some tweaks.
2. Who is a customer?
   Another very important question is to understand who your audience is. Who are the people you are trying to reach? How old are they? Where do they live? What are their needs and pain points? What interests them? Determining your customer demographic is the key to everything else.
3. Where do they congregate?
   Once you know who your audience is, the next step is figuring out where they can be found both online and in person. Do they use Facebook more than Instagram? Are they active on LinkedIn? Are they visiting the same places in your town, part of a governing body or organization? Use this information to place yourself where they are.
4. What feels overwhelming?
   There are many aspects to owning and running a business that are challenging. Marketing is one piece of the larger pie. What about marketing is hard for you? Is it writing? Design? Keeping your ideas organized? There are many amazing and often free tools that can make your life easier and take these tasks off your plate.
5. What do you feel comfortable with?
   On the other hand, what do you feel confident about? What are you excited to get started with. Don’t neglect the rest, but if you are particularly ready to go with one thing — go for it!
6. How will you measure success?
   Are you using a tool to keep track of your customers, appointments, contact requests, and payment? Are you creating a spreadsheet to manually update? Consider the ways in which you can measure your success in the easiest way possible.
7. What will you do once you have a customer?
   Marketing is important because once you start, you will see the effects for a long time forward. A post or article drives website traffic for months later. When you begin to service customers, consider how to keep them engaged and happy as well. Take note of interesting questions they have for you, reasons that motivate them to work with you, challenges they face — as all of this is great information for your marketing, future blog posts, and shows that you’re listening. Happy customers are also amazing networks to receive referrals through as well as testimonials, reviews and feedback.
8. Who are peers or competitors that are doing a good job?
   Take a look at what your peers and industry leaders are doing. Do they have blogs? What are they posted on social media? What information do they have on their website that you don’t have? What do you like or don’t like? It’s good to be aware of what your potential customers are looking at and be able to speak to the competition with knowledge and respect — but prepared to explain why you’re the right option.

A comprehensive marketing plan is being able to answer all of these questions and eventually taking action. You don’t need to know it all today, but keep it in mind.