2025 is round the corner; you’re likely to be totting up numbers, comparing goals from last year, and thinking about what you’d like to achieve next. It can feel quite overwhelming and stressful at a time when we’re supposed to be winding down and relaxing.
This blog is designed to plant some seeds for your marketing goals in the coming year. Whatever stage your business is at, it’s important to have a marketing strategy. I’m currently working with a small business as a freelance Marketing Coordinator, and we’re building a strategy from scratch, so what I say does have merit. Let’s start with…
The Biggest Mistake People Make
Assuming the only way to scale is by investing loads of money (and only money) into marketing. The Barbie Movie invested as much into their marketing as they did in the making of the film, and their campaign was incredibly successful. But Warner Bros is a 30-billion-dollar business—not comparable to the small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) reading this—and there were lots of other factors at play. Whether you’re a one-man-band or have a number of employees, it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to invest half your revenue into your marketing strategy. It’s just unrealistic.
When it comes to marketing, it’s not solely about investing money, it’s about investing time.
If you’re hiring a freelancer or staff-member to do the work, then time is money (and will likely guarantee returns). But there are some things you can do before you decide to commit to that venture.
How to Invest Time into Your Marketing Strategy
Before investing any money, you need to think about your specific business goals, using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) method for business objectives. You’re probably familiar with the fact that you need to make goals that are achievable by measurable and actionable steps. Say you own a dog walking business; instead of saying, “I want to be the go-to dog walker in my area”, you would break your plan down: “I will become the go-to dog walker in my area by gaining at least 5 regular clients within the next 3 months by promoting my services through local social media, building a website, and offering a referral discount program.” Notice the difference? Your new plan is:
Specific: Become the go-to dog walker by gaining regular clients and promoting services.
Measurable: Gain at least 5 regular clients.
Achievable: Achieving this is realistic with promotion and a referral program.
Relevant: It aligns with your desire to establish yourself as the go-to dog walker in the area.#
Time-bound: Achieve this within the next 3 months
AI TIP: For a helping hand, you can put your current goal into ChatGPT and ask it to turn your current goal into a SMART goal.
The Golden Ratio for Content
Another way to invest time is by engaging with your customers on social media; this humanises you and makes your business more approachable and relatable. Creating valuable content (like this blog, for example!) tailored to your customers encourages them to rely on you for specific information. Overall, you should aim to have a natural balance between educational, entertaining, and promotional content.
You can also invest your time by researching your customer. Here, demographics and psychographics are super important. Once you’ve evaluated these you can begin to craft your buyer persona.
What is a Buyer Persona?
According to Hubspot, your buyer personas are “Semi-fictional representations of your idea customer(s) that can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your business’s target audience”. They are unique to every company and all types of businesses will benefit.
Understanding your buyer persona is important because it shows you who, when, where and how to target.
For example, my audience is primarily SMEs, so I’m going to produce content that appeals to them. Like this, the blog you’re reading now!
An example of a company who understands their buyer persona are Surreal. An example of a company who want to reinvent their buyer persona, are Jaguar (but I don’t really feel like opening that can of worms, so let’s move on).
How to Invest *Little* Money into Marketing & Still Get Results
Facebook and Google have the best Return on Investment (ROI) when it comes to advertisements. Here’s a few rapid-fire facts and statistics for you:
Average ROI for Facebook and Google is 1:8 (200%!).
Google is best for sales (it’s based on PPC (pay-per-click) you only pay when someone clicks on your ad).
Facebook is best for engagement and traffic (audience reach is huge and content is hyper-targeted).
Google is the most used search engine (3.5 billion a day).
Facebook has 2.45 billion users (it’s the largest social networking site).
Google allows you to bid on key words, but Google also scores your ad using quality score so relevant ads will be served first, regardless of bids.
These are just some of the basics, but they are really useful to know when considering which paid advertising route to take. Like most things in life, what you put in, you get out. And you’re almost guaranteed to yield better results when you have a specific plan, rather than just spending money with no clear plan.
This All Sounds Great, But Do I Really Have to?
Marketing—when done correctly—correlates to sales. Simple as that. You can choose to tackle a marketing strategy yourself, or you could hire someone to help (hi there!). Even at part time, a Marketing Coordinator can make astronomical differences to your business’ exposure and consequent revenue. Please note that a Marketing Coordinator cannot be expected to also tackle SEO, social media, etc—at least at no extra cost. You may want to hire someone else for those reach aspects.
I’ve barely scratched the surface in this blog with regards to covering marketing. When I began work as Marketing Coordinator with the small business, the first thing I did was identify their buyer persona and craft SMART goals that align with their values. However, there are many more steps to cover, but the question is, what next? Get in touch if you’d like me to cover something specific, and I’ll rank them in order of interest. If not, stay tuned!
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