Priority Pursuit
A podcast dedicated to helping small business owners define, maintain, and pursue both their business and personal priorities so they can build lives and businesses they love.
Priority Pursuit
Marketing Overload? Identify Your Next Marketing Move for Small Business Growth
When you feel overwhelmed by the never-ending to-dos in marketing, it’s easy to miss what matters most.
Let's cut through the noise and focus on simple, actionable steps to grow your small business.
In this episode, we break down the key steps you need to take to create effective marketing for your small business. We talk about why it's crucial to focus on clear, customer-focused messaging first, how a strategic website can make all the difference, and the importance of SEO.
Tune in to this episode for practical tips that'll help your marketing efforts finally pay off. And if you like what you hear, share it with someone you know who could use some marketing clarity!
Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
- Importance of customer-focused messaging and how to create it
- Essential elements of a lead-generating website
- The role of SEO in driving traffic to your website
Other Mentioned Links & Resources
Episode 106: How to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines https://treefrogmarketing.com/how-optimize-your-website-search-engines
Episode 114: How to Build a Sales Funnel as a Small Business
https://treefrogmarketing.com/how-build-sales-funnel-small-business
Episode 119: A Simple Social Media Strategy for Small Businesses
https://treefrogmarketing.com/simple-social-media-strategy-small-businesses
Learn More About Treefrog’s Small Business Marketing Resources & Services:
https://www.treefrogmarketing.com
Learn how to write your Marketing Guiding Statements:
https://treefrogmarketing.com/how-write-marketing-guiding-statements
Get a Free PDF Guide: 8 Things Every Small Business’s Website MUST Include to Convert Visitors into Paying Customers:|
https://treefrogmarketing.com/8-things-every-small-business-website-should-include
Receive 50% Off Your First Year of HoneyBook:
https://www.treefrogmarketing.com/honeybook-coupon-code
Book a Strategic Marketing Coaching:
https://treefrogmarketing.com/marketing-consulting-small-businesses
Join the Priority Pursuit Podcast Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/179106264013426
Follow or DM Treefrog Marketing on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/treefroggers
Follow or DM Kelly Rice on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/treefrogkelly
Follow or DM Victoria on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/victorialrayburn
Kelly Rice [00:00:00]:
Your website has to become the foundation of your marketing efforts and should become your business's most powerful marketing tool. And this is because at the end of the day, all marketing tools exist to help drive traffic to your website. And your site is where your ideal customers or all your ideal clients will get the information that they need and decide to take action. And then they're convinced that they should buy from you or at least be able to take that next step in contacting you. Hey there. You're listening to the prior Pursuit podcast. A podcast dedicated to helping small business owners and leaders define, maintain, and pursue both their personal and business priorities so that they can build lives and businesses they love.
Victoria Rayburn [00:00:42]:
We're your hosts, Kelly Rice and Victoria Rayburn. And today we want to give our answer to a question that we get from small business owners all the time, which is, what the heck should I focus on next when it comes to my marketing?
Kelly Rice [00:00:57]:
Yes. And to give this question some context, small businesses often come to us when they are overwhelmed or burned out with marketing. And I mean, they're often reading marketing books and trying to update their website or building a new one altogether and trying to learn SEO on their own and doing all of the best things that they can do to develop, like, social media content. And, you know, the few minutes that they have every single day trying to learn all of these things. So they're trying to learn sales funnels, softwares, and they sporadically send emails and their email lists. They're kind of growing them, but not really. And they're sometimes sending emails and they're doing all the things that they're supposed to do, right? Like, and then you throw in, like, learning how to run Google Ads and social media ads. And so many people are just consuming so much business in marketing related content that they are just completely overwhelmed because with so much advice, they really have no idea what to do or what to focus on next.
Kelly Rice [00:01:59]:
Right? Like, and then on top of all this, they're usually really frustrated because all the things that they are doing aren't delivering the results that they want.
Victoria Rayburn [00:02:08]:
Yes, because while there is a ton of marketing advice out there, a lot of it is bad marketing advice, but that is another topic. So basically, though, y'all, many of the small business owners and leaders that we talk to, they're just overwhelmed. They're doing so many things. They're doing too many things. And they're trying to do all of these things, but they're just feeling defeated when their efforts don't pay off. If you put in that much work you know, you should see some ROI. But I think it's also super important to know that they're doing all of these marketing things on top of their other responsibilities, both within their businesses and at home.
Kelly Rice [00:02:46]:
Exactly. So today, if you can take all of those feelings, if you feel all of those feelings and you're like, yes, right. Like, we talked about this many times that, you know, when I read books or things like that, I'm like, hey, they're saying what I'm saying. If you can feel what we're saying, we want to be able to help you understand the top three reasons why your marketing may not be working and lay out the next steps that you should take when it comes to creating an effective marketing strategy. So, like, listen, there are so, there's so many small businesses that are wasting time and money on marketing because these three simple reasons. So first, they talk about themselves too much. I mean, if you look at just about any type of marketing, messaging or social media post companies are constantly telling people how great they are, how great their products and services are, and then they expect them to be excited about how great they are. And this just wastes time and money because no one really likes to feel like they're being sold to.
Kelly Rice [00:03:46]:
And then the second thing is, is that they completely overstimulate and they confuse people because they try to tell them too many things at once and they use industry language that just doesn't make any sense. And then they usually highlight things that people really don't care about. So basically, they make it harder for someone to want to buy from them. And then the third is that they make marketing way harder than it needs to be because they don't have a strategy. So they just, you know, they're not consistent and they keep trying one marketing tactic after another and they have no idea why it's not working. So all of this just ends up wasting a ton of time and money on marketing that just doesn't work. Which is why today we're going to review how to solve these marketing problems.
Victoria Rayburn [00:04:37]:
And if you've listened to a single episode of priority pursuit, you likely know what I am going to say first. But if you want your marketing, it's.
Kelly Rice [00:04:46]:
Like, I need a, I need like a, sorry, I need like a cardboard sign that says, hey, we're getting ready to talk about clear messaging.
Victoria Rayburn [00:04:53]:
Yes. Or just like play the same thing every time. People know that they can fast forward by 37 seconds. Like, yes, I know we don't have to talk about clear messaging, but yeah.
Kelly Rice [00:05:01]:
Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Victoria Rayburn [00:05:03]:
But yeah, I. Nope, totally understand. Yeah. But yeah. If you want your marketing to be successful, you have to have clear messaging. If you have not heard that enough times already. But yeah, y'all, the fact of the matter is, you know, you can build a stunning website. You can post 16 reels a day and implement sales funnels and capitalize on all the latest trends and do all the marketing things that you're supposed to do.
Victoria Rayburn [00:05:27]:
I hope you can hear my air quotes. For those of you listening and not watching this video, for all of these efforts and tactics mean they're just a waste of time and money and resources if you don't know what to say to your ideal customers. And this is because research shows that people don't buy the best products and services, they buy the ones they can understand easiest. Which is why clear messaging is the key to successful marketing. Because in order to convert prospects into paying customers, you have to know exactly what to say to them to hold their attention and ultimately make them want to do business with you.
Kelly Rice [00:06:02]:
Right? And just to make this super clear, if you don't take the time to clarify your messaging, all of your marketing efforts are pretty useless.
Victoria Rayburn [00:06:11]:
No, not pretty useless, they're just useless.
Kelly Rice [00:06:13]:
Like it's useless. Yeah. Yeah. And the best way to clarify your messaging is to use a story based framework to write what we call marketing guidance statements. And this is because people are 22 times more likely to remember your business or your offer when you use elements of story to frame your messaging. And we've talked about marketing guidance statements and I don't know how many episodes at this point, but in case you aren't familiar with them, these statements use story based frameworks and formulas to position your business as a trusted partner so that people don't feel like they're being sold to in your marketing messaging. And when you take the time to create them, you can refer to them as you work on writing website copy or blog post or social media posts or developing really any other marketing piece so that your marketing is customer focused rather than being braggy or salesy. So that your messaging has the power to convert your ideal customers.
Victoria Rayburn [00:07:09]:
And y'all will tell you where you can learn to write your own marketing guiding statements in just a second. But whether you're just starting a business or you've been in business for decades and your marketing like it just isn't delivering the results that you want, clear messaging needs to be your top marketing priority. So if you're marketing right now, if it isn't working like I'm telling you, like start here. After all, your messaging, like, it is what ensures that your marketing uses the right language in order to be effective. Because, you know, like Kelly said, like, everything is a waste of time unless the messaging is right now. Think of your marketing guiding statements as the gps of your marketing efforts. Once you write them and make them like, really the cornerstone of your marketing efforts, you're going to more easily get where you want to go because all of your marketing materials are going to be written in a way that allows you to actually connect with your best customers.
Kelly Rice [00:08:01]:
Yeah, and because we know that small businesses marketing cannot succeed without clear messaging, we put together a free mini course that walks you through exactly how to write your own marketing guidance statements. And you can find it by going to the show notes or by visiting treefrogmarketing.com. forward slash marketing guiding statements yes, and.
Victoria Rayburn [00:08:21]:
I know that you've now heard this so many times, but I'm going to say one more, just one more time. So it's really clear your marketing will not be successful, meaning it's not going to convert. It isn't going to attract your ideal customers if you don't have clear, customer focused messaging. So before you spend another minute or another dollar or any other resource on any other marketing tactic, please, please, please take the time to write your marketing guiding statements again. You can learn how to write these statements with our free mini course which can be found in the show notes or@treefrogmarketing.com marketing guiding statements.
Kelly Rice [00:08:58]:
Perfect. Now, once you have clear messaging, the next thing that you need is a strategic, lead generating website.
Victoria Rayburn [00:09:05]:
Yes. And now before I feel like this episode is full of a lot of tough love, I'm sorry, but before you say like, great, I have a website, I'm going to check this off my list and go do the next thing. Please keep listening because your website may need some updates and might actually be what's hindering your marketing efforts right now.
Kelly Rice [00:09:24]:
Yeah, exactly, because your website is your most powerful marketing tool. Now, I do want to be clear that social media and email marketing and other marketing tactics and tools certainly matter, and we'll get into those here in a little bit. But your website has to become the foundation of your marketing efforts and should become your business's most powerful marketing tool. And this is because at the end of the day, all marketing tools exist to help drive traffic to your website. And your site is where your ideal customers or all your ideal clients will get the information that they need and decide to take action. And then they're convinced that they should buy from you or at least be able to take that next step in contacting you. So with that said, it isn't enough just to have a website. So many small business owners assume that if you know, you just slap up a website online, that business will come.
Kelly Rice [00:10:16]:
But in order for your site to be your most powerful marketing tool, it has to do a couple things. And we're going to just break those down really quickly. So first, your site needs to serve your ideal clients well by helping them quickly and easily understand what you offer, how you can help them solve a problem, and then how you can, or how they can easily work with you. So in other words, your website needs to include the right information. Because if it takes longer than 5 seconds for website visitors to determine the answer to those questions, they're practically guaranteed, guaranteed to leave your site and you'll just miss out on business. So in our experience, there are eight things that every business website needs to include to income to convert site visitors into paying customers. And we don't really have all the time today to go into those, and I know that we've talked about them before. So if you want to learn what those eight elements are, visit treefrogmarketing.com website to access the free guide called eight Things every small businesses website must include to convert visitors into paying customers.
Kelly Rice [00:11:23]:
So now when your website includes these eight elements and any other information that is pertinent to your ideal customers, it will be much more likely to attract the right customer and your ideal customers. You know, basically when your website includes the right information, it will serve as a 24/7 salesperson that generates business and saves time by filtering out even those unqualified leads. So you're not running around in circles or wasting time talking to people that either don't want, can't afford or not a right fit for your organization.
Victoria Rayburn [00:11:56]:
Yes. And then in addition to including the right information, your website needs to be found where your ideal clients are already looking for your products or services. And that is at the top of Google search results. You see 97% of people use Google when they're in need of a product or a service. And as a result, if you can get your website and business to rank on the first page of Google at the top of Google search results, you can get your information in front of prospects who are actively searching for and likely even ready to purchase exactly what you have to offer. So basically, when your website ranks the top of Google search results, you don't have to spend so much of your time going after new leads. Instead, many of your strongest leads are going to start coming to you through Google. So with this in mind, if you've yet to optimize your website for search engines, this needs to be your next step.
Victoria Rayburn [00:12:48]:
So first of all, make sure your website serves people really well. If it doesn't, you know, start there, but then make sure that it's optimized for search engines. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And it is. In case you aren't familiar with this, it's a free process that helps your website rank well on Google and other search engines. So that way when users conduct searches related to your products, your services or your content, they can find your website, they can find your business information. And truthfully, there are a lot of moving parts to a successful SEO strategy. But SEO has the power to do big things for your small business.
Victoria Rayburn [00:13:25]:
After all, when people intentionally look for a service or product, most go to Google and many are ready to make a purchase. So when your website, you know, it's one of the first solutions that they see in their search results, they are going to be more likely to buy from you because you're showing up exactly when they need you. Now, as a side note, I just want to make this clear, kind of already did say this, but SEO, it only works if your website serves your customers well. If your site isn't built well and it doesn't include the right information, like Kelli talked about, it isn't going to convert website visitors into paying customers, which again, Kelly just discussed. So SEO can get people to your website, but it cannot convert them. Getting people to your website does not mean that they're going to convert. So don't waste your time doing SEO work if you don't have a site or you don't have plans to have a site that serves your ideal customers well. Now, if you can do your SEO work, honestly, if you can do that before you start developing web copy, like you're going to put yourself in a much better place if you are developing a new site, but we're not going to get into that right now.
Victoria Rayburn [00:14:25]:
So if though, like you're going to spend time and or money on a website, though you are short changing yourself if your site isn't optimized for search engines because you're limiting the reach of your site. So these two things, including the right information and then SEO, they go hand in hand for small businesses. Now, there are a lot of moving parts, like I said, to a successful SEO strategy, and we are not going to get into all the technicalities in this episode. But if you want to learn exactly how to optimize your website for Google, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 106, which is called how to optimize your website for search engines. And you could find that episode at the link in the show notes or wherever you listen to podcasts. But once you have clear messaging and a website that includes the right information and that ranks well in search engines, you're essentially going to have a very solid marketing foundation for your small business.
Natalie Franke [00:15:17]:
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Kelly Rice [00:16:02]:
Most businesses dont have an effective marketing strategy and because of this they try one tactic after another without seeing results. This not only prevents consistent business growth, it makes managing marketing efforts more difficult.
Kelly Rice [00:16:15]:
Than it should be.
Kelly Rice [00:16:16]:
As a marketing agency for small businesses, we understand how frustrating it can be when hard work doesnt deliver the results that you want. Because of this, Treefrog has developed a proven four step marketing system that will help any small business grow. On our website. You can also schedule a 30 minutes discovery call to discuss working with Treefrog to build a marketing strategy that will allow your small business to finally see the growth you've been working so hard to achieve.
Kelly Rice [00:16:41]:
So before you do anything else, before you spend another minute or a dollar on marketing stuff, make sure that you have these items taken care of. Because quite frankly, all the marketing that you're potentially doing or that you will do is a waste of time and money if you don't have a clear message and your marketing efforts aren't going to be effective unless you have a website that is built for generating leads.
Victoria Rayburn [00:17:03]:
Mm hmm. Oh, because like we discussed, pretty much every other marketing tools purpose is, you know, to drive prospects to your website. So having a website with clear messaging on it, so, so, so important.
Kelly Rice [00:17:18]:
Exactly. Now one now like I'm so excited about all the stuff that we're going to talk about. So once you have these things taken care of, and as a side note, I don't want you to like start feeling overwhelmed because you're like, oh my gosh, I have to do all of these things because I promise that if you go back in and you follow the guides that we've given, we've given you step by step plans on how to do this. So it's not like we're just throwing you out there to the wolves and saying, hey, you need to do all these things to make your marketing work. No, we're telling you how to do them. So do those things that Victoria just talked about. And then once you have those taken care of, the next thing we want to encourage you to do is to focus on or invest in content marketing strategy that puts prospects into a sales funnel. Now first of all, a sales funnel is simply a content marketing framework that takes potential customers to paying customers.
Kelly Rice [00:18:11]:
Essentially, it allows you to serve your prospects, to build trust with them and help them see that your product or service is the answer to the problem that they're facing. Now I do want to clarify that a sales funnel is not a sales pitch. Okay, I'm going to say that again. Sales funnel is not a sales fit sales pitch because with a sales pitch, you are trying to like, seal the deal. However, when you use a sales funnel, you are empowering potential customers to solve their problem by acting as their guide before you go in for the sale. Does that make sense?
Victoria Rayburn [00:18:47]:
Yes. And sales funnels like they're important and highly effective because they allow you to build relationships with your ideal audience. And like Kelly said, guide them through the natural, more or less the natural phases of a relationship so that they want to do business with you. And this is really important because nobody likes to be sold to. You know, I think we've all heard the Donald Miller example of like, going in for the sale right away is the equivalent of laying eyes on somebody for the first time, walking up to them, getting down on one knee and asking them to marry you. It's super uncomfortable. It's not appropriate and it's not likely to end well. But a sales funnel, it's more like dating.
Victoria Rayburn [00:19:27]:
So essentially, by providing your prospects with the content and information they need to get to know you and to see how your product or service can make their life better, they're naturally going to want to purchase from you.
Kelly Rice [00:19:39]:
Yes. And now, in all honesty, there are quite a few moving parts to building a successful sales funnel. So for the sake of time. We aren't going to get into all of those in this episode. However, if this is the next marketing step that you need to focus on, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 114, how to build a sales funnel for a. For a small business, which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts or we'll be sure to link those in the show notes as well. But if you don't have a sales funnel, this needs to be a top priority because 96% of website visitors, I think it's 96%, they're not really ready to make a purchase when they visit your website for the first time. So this means that most of your site visitors aren't going to convert immediately.
Kelly Rice [00:20:22]:
However, when you have an effective sales funnel, you can get email addresses, keep the conversation going, and then make yourself six times more likely to convert leads into customers when they are dropped into your follow up series. When, um, within your sales funnel themselves.
Victoria Rayburn [00:20:39]:
Yes. So, friend, if you don't have one, you need a sales funnel. And like Kelly said, if you would like some guidance on how to build a funnel, please go back and listen to episode 114. We break down each and every step of building a funnel in that episode. And again, you can find that wherever you listen to podcasts or in the show notes. But then after you have clear messaging, a strategic website and a sales funnel, the next step you want to take is promoting your products, your services and your content. And you can do this as a small business through organic social media, digital ads and email marketing. This is not to say that there are not other options, but we've found these tactics or tools to be the most effective and even the most affordable options for small businesses.
Kelly Rice [00:21:25]:
Yeah, and I totally agree. And with that said, once you get to this promotion step, it's where you're going to focus your energy and resources. It very much depends on the ideal client and your business goals. So while we found that these tactics work really well for small businesses, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to start using all of them tomorrow, or even any of them. Well, you'll need to use some of them.
Victoria Rayburn [00:21:51]:
You don't have to use all of them.
Kelly Rice [00:21:52]:
Yeah, you don't have to use all of them. Yeah. But you simply need to use the tools that make the most sense for your audience and your goals.
Victoria Rayburn [00:22:03]:
So. Yes, absolutely. And just to give an example, like, you don't have to be on every single social media platform. You don't have to do Facebook and X and Twitter and LinkedIn X and Twitter are the same thing. Sorry, like, that's never going to get used to.
Kelly Rice [00:22:17]:
We're old. We're always going to say X and Twitter like the same thing.
Victoria Rayburn [00:22:20]:
It's, it's fine, but okay, we're not going to have a Twitter slash X rant right now. But anyway, you don't have to be on every single social media platform. You simply want to make sure that you're utilizing and focusing on the platforms that your ideal client actually uses.
Kelly Rice [00:22:38]:
Exactly. So in this step, you need to determine where or how you're going to promote your products and your services and content and all of that stuff. And again, we recommend at least considering organic social media, digital ads. So like Google and social media ads, and then email marketing. And in order to determine your next marketing step, you need to decide which of these options is going to best help you meet your goals. Now, chances are you should be using most of these tools in some capacity, unless like, your ideal client is opposed to social media, for instance. But the fact of the matter is that as a small businesses, your resources, whether your resources are your time or your money, they're limited. And as a result, you want to prioritize the promotional outlets that will give you the most return on your investment.
Victoria Rayburn [00:23:27]:
Yes. And again, you don't have to do everything right away. You just need to do the next right thing or the next most strategic thing for your business. And I say that because I know some of y'all are listening right now and probably starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed. But if we could, you know, sit down and have a cup of coffee and dive into your business, we would love to give you specific recommendations. But because we can't do that, at least not right now, in case this helps, I do want to give you a few, just blanket recommendations to help you hopefully decide what is next for your business, what part of your marketing you should be focusing on next. So, first of all, if your ideal client is on social media, organic social media should be a priority. Chances are your ideal clients are on social media every single day, probably multiple times a day.
Victoria Rayburn [00:24:16]:
Their phone probably tells them, hey, you had 4 hours of screen time yesterday and they're a little embarrassed about it. But even four, you say four, like.
Kelly Rice [00:24:24]:
That'S not, that's probably eight.
Victoria Rayburn [00:24:26]:
Yeah.
Kelly Rice [00:24:27]:
Realistic. In bed at night, flipping through TikTok. Yeah.
Victoria Rayburn [00:24:30]:
Yes. Maybe four is goals, I don't know. But it's still, it's a ton of time. It's a, it's a lot of time. And even if organic social media doesn't have as much reach as it once did. Social media gives you a chance to show up where your ideal clients are hanging out on a daily basis. Again, if you you like, you just don't have to be on every single social media platform. So please take a deepen breath.
Victoria Rayburn [00:24:55]:
You just need to hone the platforms that your ideal client uses. Now, we aren't going to get into all of that today. However, I highly recommend going back and listening to episode 119, which is called a simple social media strategy for small businesses. And this episode, angel, who's our content director, she makes social media, well, simple. Like, she makes it so, so simple and easy. And you're willing to listen to that episode and be able to take giant deep breaths at the end of because.
Kelly Rice [00:25:24]:
Social media doesn't have to be complicated. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by it, go back and listen to that episode. You know, determine which platforms you're going to use and then learn the ins and outs of those and those alone. Don't feel like again, we've said a whole bunch of times that you have to be everywhere, all at once.
Victoria Rayburn [00:25:42]:
Yes. Now, social media is important. There is a good chance that you'll see a bigger return on your investment with email marketing. So to give you some numbers. But email has again and again proven to be the best marketing channel in terms of ROI for small businesses. So according to agency analytics, it's estimated that email generates $36 for every dollar spent, which is an ROI of 3500%. On the other hand, social media generates an estimated return of investment of $2, $2.80 for every dollar spent, which is obviously a huge, huge difference.
Kelly Rice [00:26:20]:
And when you hear the numbers, I know this can seem shocking, but when you stop to think about, like, the updated social media algorithms and things like that, it's really not that surprising. I think it's fewer than 10% of your followers will likely see your organic social media post. However, email allows you to communicate directly with your audience, and especially those that are in your database that have already decided they potentially want to work with you in your emails. They're going to be more or less guaranteed to end up in inboxes. You know, make an email, a direct line of communication between you and, you know, potential customers who have already expressed potentially an interest for your products and services. You know, we're not necessarily saying, hey, go out and just buy lists or do whatever it is and just, you know, bombard with people, but you should be having, you should be data mining the list that you have and working through that with, you know, specific offers or whatever it is. But, you know, basically people in your email list is what it comes down to is they've already shared their email address with you so that you know that it's there at least a warm lead.
Victoria Rayburn [00:27:25]:
Exactly. And in order to see success with email marketing, though, you have to actually have an email list. So your sales funnel is going to help you build your email list and you can certainly see success the smallest. However, this is something to keep in mind if you're trying to determine the next best step for your small business. So let's say you have a sales funnel, but, you know, your list is just not very big right now. Should email marketing be a priority? Yes, absolutely. But, you know, should you put all of your eggs in the email marketing basket in hopes of tripling your revenue this year? Probably. Probably nothing.
Victoria Rayburn [00:28:04]:
And again, the goal of this episode is to help you figure out the next right thing to do. So this might be something that you prioritize after systematizing, you know, your other promotion outlets. Because again, we want you to get the biggest Roi you can get sooner rather than later.
Kelly Rice [00:28:19]:
Yeah. And if we're talking about your next steps, and not everything will ideally or eventually do all the things that you want them to do, you're going to want to focus on whatever is going to give you the biggest RoI. I mean, I don't mean to be vague, but I mean, it's, we can't tell you exactly what to do because we don't know your businesses. You have to figure that out, right?
Victoria Rayburn [00:28:45]:
Absolutely. And, you know, you might be listening to this and thinking like, hey, I am crushing it on social media, but I'm still not meeting my goals. Like, okay, then maybe it is time to explore email marketing. Maybe that is where you need to go next. Okay, but we have one more promotion topic that I do want to make sure that we cover. So last but not least, you should consider running social media ads and or Google Ads to promote your business and content.
Kelly Rice [00:29:09]:
Yeah. And if it's okay, let's start with social media ads. So while organic social medias reach maybe down, social media advertising is highly effective for a lot of small businesses. Now, just like with organic social media, with social media ads, you don't need to be on every platform. Instead, put your time and money into the channels where your ideal clients are already spending their time. And we highly recommend utilizing social media ads for a few reasons. First, assuming your ideal clients use social media, it meets them where they are. And additionally, social media advertising is highly targeted and actually makes reaching your ideal customers a lot easier.
Kelly Rice [00:29:49]:
I mean, with most traditional media options, like take print ads for example, you don't have a lot of control over who sees your advertisements. Yes, you can choose specific publications or outlets that your ideal customers consume and then send mailers or do whatever that way. But to an extent, with print ads, or even potentially direct mail, you invest in an ad and then you have to hope and pray sometimes that the right people will see and take it, you know, advantage and move to the next step. But with social media ads, you can specifically target your best customers and ensure ads only appear to people you want to connect with. So like for example, as you set up your ads, you can specify things like age and gender and interest and more so that you know that every dollar you're spend is helping you reach your ideal clients. And when you even use retargeting options so that those who have shown interest in your products or services, they'll actually see your ads again. So it's kind of like reiterating the, hey, I know you want this pair of shoes, don't you? Like, yeah, you know, helping them, helping to show them that this is going to be a really good decision for them to actually work with your company. So there's a lot of benefits to utilizing targeted social media ads.
Victoria Rayburn [00:31:05]:
Yeah. So basically, y'all, if your ideal clients are on social media, chances are running social media ads is only going to help you better reach them. Now, speaking of paid advertising, Google Ads can also work really well for small businesses. Like we discussed when we talked about SEO, when people are looking for a product or service, or if they have a question, most turn to Google. So while prioritizing your organic ranking, meaning where your website and content rank on Google as a free listing, so you're not putting any money behind that. We also recommend utilizing Google Ads because you can essentially ensure that your website is listed first in search search results, making it much more likely that your ideal clients are going to find you.
Kelly Rice [00:31:51]:
Yes, but that said, Google Ads don't necessarily work for all small businesses. It really depends on who your target audience is, who your competitors are, and really what your budget is. But we found that Google Ads, they're especially helpful for local businesses. So, meaning businesses with physical locations or like service areas, because 97% of people use Google when they're in search of a local product or service. And as a result, Google Ads can be very, a very strategic type of promotional tool for you. And they also work well for like niche or online businesses. Because, like, big businesses use Google Ads and it can be really hard to compete with their Google Ad budgets. So if you have a, if, if your business has big business competitors, this likely isn't a great promotional tool for you unless you have a really big ad budget.
Kelly Rice [00:32:48]:
However, for businesses with specific niches or specific service areas or you're kind of unique, Google Ads can deliver really big results and we found them to be very helpful, especially for, like, local service based businesses.
Victoria Rayburn [00:33:04]:
Absolutely. So again, you do not have to start utilizing all of these tools tomorrow. Instead, we recommend choosing the promotion outlet or maybe like two options at the most right now that make the most sense for your business and your target audience, where you are at this current point in your business. So master that, systematize that. Then you can move on to the next most effective promotion option for you.
Kelly Rice [00:33:31]:
Yeah, and I just want to say that we know that there's almost nothing more frustrating than trying one marketing tactic after another without seeing results. So as a result, we hope that this episode has given you at least some direction, if not a plan to follow. Right. And at the very least, we hope it's helped you kind of identify the next step that you need to take in order to improve the effectiveness of your marketing. And that said, if you'd like more personalized assessment of kind of what you're doing, what you should be doing, those types of things, I want to encourage you to take our small business marketing assessment. So this quiz will take you, I don't know, it's maybe three minutes to complete and it will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your current marketing efforts and strategy. Because like we said at the beginning, a lot of small businesses are kind of all over the place. So this assessment will help you figure out what you're doing, what you're doing well, and maybe some areas that you need some improvement in and areas to focus on.
Kelly Rice [00:34:35]:
And then you can go back and listen to this episode again and then systematically walk through what needs to be done. So to take this quiz, visit the link in the show notes or go to treefrogmarketing.com forward slash assessment and it will help you determine which aspects of your marketing are working well and where there's room for improvement. And then what really you should be focusing your resources and your time on.
Victoria Rayburn [00:34:58]:
Yes, absolutely. So one more time, in case you didn't catch that, you can find the quiz in the show notes or@treefrogmarketing.com assessment. But friend, don't let marketing overwhelm you. Instead, use this quiz to assess your current marketing efforts, determine your next most strategic move, and then go from there. Marketing doesn't have to be overwhelming. You just need to take a step back and figure out what your next step should be. Now, even if you can't implement an entire strategy tomorrow, when you're focusing on the right marketing tactics, you're going to see business growth. So on that note, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the Priority Pursuit podcast.
Victoria Rayburn [00:35:38]:
If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll take a moment to share it with your small business friends and that you'll join us next week for even more marketing boundary and priority driven tactics you can use to build a life and a small business that you love.