5 Questions to Test Your Marketing Strategy as a Small Business Owner

Want to know if your marketing strategy is really growing your small business?

Then here are the five in-your-face questions you must ask yourself. Be ruthlessly honest in your answers. Your insights will help you accelerate your growth and the success you enjoy.

1. Are narrowly defined prospects becoming aware of your business and brand?

A clear sign of a maturing marketing strategy is when introductions, referrals, and lead generating strategies are bringing in ideal customers, instead of anyone and everyone with a business card.

The key here is to research what your ideal customer reads, listens to, where they hang out and spend their time online and off. It’s also useful to identify any triggers caused by some type of life or business cycle change, calendar event, budget refresh, office relocation, etc. (Hint: focusing on identifying what these triggers are with your current clients is the best way to immediately grow.)

The first impression of your business or brand can come through many ways today: website, ads, direct mail, content, networking, public relations, referrals, social media.

A successful marketing strategy always comes from narrowly defining your ideal customer and then choosing the right communication channels that have their attention: eyes and ears.

2. Is your small business building more trust today than it was last quarter?

A key part of your marketing strategy’s job is to build trust. Trust is the single most important business element and is at the heart of every transaction and always on trial, every day.

How can your small business demonstrate more competence, credibility, and trustworthiness today than last quarter?

• Be visible. Be consistent. Use the same profile picture across social networks. Familiarity breeds trust.
• Develop a sales process. Simply having a process for when someone calls, emails, completes an online form or requests a consultation is a start.
• Create and share content that solves your readers’ problems.
• Develop testimonials, case studies, and success stories, because your business or brand track record will shape their opinion.
• Ask questions. Answer queries. Say thank you.
• Admit freely if you don’t know an answer. Nobody expects you to know everything.

3. Are you developing ways for prospects to sample your small business expertise or brilliance?

This means you’re helping prospects get a very tangible way they can understand and experience your offer.

Although you may have created the perfect solution there are times when people need a date before committing to the entire purchase.

It’s essential that you find ways for people sample your products or expertise. You can do this by creating a try before you buy option, creating an unheard of guarantee, a low-cost version, creating a free or low-cost experience of your knowledge or expertise through an 30-minute consultation, audit or evaluation or presenting educational seminars.

Getting your foot in the door with low barrier entry offers is one of the keys to moving people into full-fledged customers.

4. Do you regularly ask, ‘How do current customers get more out of our service or product?”

This is a tough one for so many small business owners. Think about how you onboard new customers, show them new ways to use your solution, and even give them the keys to success.

If you aren’t creating processes, content and tools that show customers how to get more out of what they just bought, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to educate at a higher level, build on trust and increase customer loyalty.

5. Do you find yourself and staff intentionally generating referrals?

If you’re not focused on creating referral motivation, one that gives you a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace, your small business won’t survive long in the world as we know it today.

Generating referral can happen intentionally if you formalize the process or put a process in place to make them happen. Generating referrals today can be easy, viral, organized, automatic and profitable.

• create a team and introduce them to your customers
• sponsor a non-profit event and incorporate your customers
• create educational information or gift certificates
• feature your success stories in your marketing materials
• hold customer appreciation events

There you have the five core questions you must ask to see if your marketing strategy is focused on growth as a small business owner.

I hope you enjoyed this article!

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