Hi Guys / Girls.
As some of you know, I'm a marketing consultant, and have been lurking here as I'm writing a book on the subject of marketing small service based businesses, and it's very useful for me to gauge the over-all level of marketing understanding among businesses just like yours.
Since I've been here I have got involved in a few marketing related discussions, and have been quite critical of the advice some members are giving. I had a chat with Phil on the phone this morning, and was most impressed with his commitment not only to the landscaping industry generally, but also to providing the members of this forum with as many valuable resources as possible. With that in mind, I mentioned to him that I would be happy to write a few articles or start a few threads whilst I'm here, that can (hopefully) point a few members in the right direction from a marketing perspective.
Marketing as a subject, is hugely misunderstood. This misunderstanding largely exists due to the function of a marketing department within a larger organisation. These marketing professionals deal mainly with promotional marketing, and have very little to do with the strategic approach the business takes. In a large organisation it's not the marketing department that makes the marketing decisions, it's the board and other senior managers. The problem is, sooner or later these marketing employees fancy a go at consulting. When these new consultants start to advise small businesses, they leave out a huge chunk of the process, simply because (as an employee) they didn't know anything about the 'bigger picture'.
Anyway, before I bore you all with my criticisms of the marketing industry generally, I'll leave it there, and just say that if anyone has any specific marketing related questions, or just wants to debate anything marketing related, I'm here.
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How much should a small/micro (1-5 employees) business be spending percentage wise on it's marketing.
Is there an average of profit / turnover that should be allocated to the overall marketing of products and services?
I know there will be no hard and fast rules, just curious to know is there some sort of norm?
Any good marketing books you would recommend Stuart? I've read some of Dan Kennedy's stuff mainly because it is quite readable. I find some of the more academic stuff very dry and not relevant to any specific business.
I think there are a few points here. First, it really doesn't matter what the average spend is. Time spent working out what to do, and how to do it, will be a much better use of resources than simply spending money on 'advertising'. Advertising and promotional marketing are a very small part of marketing, and are the bit that most people blindly throw money at. When you realise that the majority of small businesses do a pretty poor job of marketing, you also realise that how much they spend doing it, is irrelevant to you.
The next point I would make is that social media is largely over rated for businesses such as yours. Huge numbers of people throw themselves into it, thinking that it's a free way to gain publicity. They even kid themselves into thinking that they are working when they are messing about on Facebook and Twitter. In a business like yours, your time is your most valuable resource. My advice would simply be to make sure you don't waste much of it on social media.
Allocating a percentage of anything to marketing is a mistake. The amount spent should be calculated based on the optimum spend to achieve the best ROI, not just simply spending a fixed amount because that's what you have allocated.
£500 spent based on sound marketing principles, will give much better results than £5000 spent with no sound marketing strategy in place.
Robbie said:
Unfortunately, it's going to be a few more months before the world's greatest small business marketing book will be available.
There are several problems with trying to learn marketing from books, as is clearly evident in some of the marketing related threads on this forum. The main problem is that nearly all books that deal with strategy and business development have been written with the strategies of huge corporations in mind. Examples of airlines, supermarket chains, or huge software companies aren't particularly relevant to the self employed and small business owners. The other type of marketing book is one that deals predominantly with promotional marketing, without giving much thought to strategy. The problem with these books is that promotional marketing information is much less effective without a decent strategy to base it on.
With the above points in mind, I'll have a think about a selection of books that I think would help to give a reasonable understanding of the main points, and get back to you.
James McKay said:
Really interested in this thread and looking forward to reading and sharing the articles you will write on here Stuart.
I already like the points that you have brought up, especially about social media.
I don't want to take the content away from Landscape Juice, but if you are every interested in writing for the Jobber Blog to promote the upcoming launch we would be happy to have you. I will see if I can get some of our UK users to come join in this thread.
Stuart, I am agree with you many people understands that marketing professional do only promotion of products to make sales. But it is important to have proper product knowledge and get it deliver to the consumers including good & bad both parts.
Hi Andy
I spend a fair bit of winter time on my marketing activities i.e The 5 P's ect
This winter I plan on evaluating how last year went and changing a few things around as I'm sure most people do...
One of the area's that I have looked at is establishing myself as an 'expert' in my chosen field so I can help justify a premium price tag and set myself apart from the local competition.
I see the best way in doing this is to create a few different videos on how to's videos and a bit about myself ect, create good newsletters with interesting content for my readers and blog.
I'm currently engaging with a local marketing firm through a council aided grant scheme to help me achieve this...
Until I started to receive professional help I was as most other are a bit haphazard and didn't have great results on social media and understand why you say not to not to spend much time on it...
Yes, I think this will turn out to be a useful resource for the members on here.
I'd be more than happy to write some blog posts for you. A lot of my work revolves around helping small businesses to improve their operations and procedures in order to give them a marketing advantage. Your product fits very well with the way in which I work.
With everyone seemingly reading (or having read) the E-myth and 4 hour work week, there is a huge opportunity to push a product such as yours in this country. Everyone is looking for ways to automate and tailor their processes for better time efficiency at the moment. If I was advising you as a client, I would definitely be looking at ways to leverage an advantage from this trend.
I would say that my target market and yours are almost identical. Anyone who could benefit from your product could also benefit from my advice.
Ill send you a quick message with my contact details.
Edit. I forgot this forum only allows messages to be sent to friends. I've sent you a friend request.
Landen @ Jobber said:
Not sure who Andy is, but as there doesn't seem to be an Andy on this thread I thought I'd reply anyway.
5 P's?? As a general rule there are either 4 or 7, depending on the type of business; although actually I'm a firm believer in there being 7 for every business. The P's are good to get you thinking in the right direction, but are a little too academic for my liking.
It's great you are using professional advice to enhance your business. The only thing I would say is to make sure that they help you to actually research the best and most profitable opportunities, and then help you do build your business around these opportunities. An awful lot of marketing professionals will simply concentrate on finding ways to promote a service, rather than building the foundations to make sure it will work. Being seen as an expert is a sound idea, but it needs to be done in the right way. Too many people spend time setting themselves up as an expert without assessing the commercial viability of what they are doing.
I'll give you an example. Often, when speaking to gardeners, they think a special skill will give them a competitive (and therefore also a marketing) advantage. Gardeners with a background in greenkeeping often think that the fact they can make a client's lawn look like a bowling green is an advantage. They don't appreciate that there is no commercial need for such a service, and the fact that although decent promotional techniques can generate interest, it's not going to make money.
Actually, green keeping is also a really good analogy to use when talking about marketing. Marketing, as with greenkeeping is all about the preparation. Yes you can throw some chemicals about to get reasonable results, but if you want top results the chemicals wont work if you don't deal with the underlying issues. An awful lot of people carry out marketing in the same way they go about dealing with lawn problems. Ignore the thatch, underlying drainage and compaction issues, and poor selection of turf, and crack straight on with chucking some feed on it.
If you would like an opinion on what the marketing guys are telling you to do, I'd be happy to take a look.
Robbie said:
Stuart said: I would appreciate that, thanks.
School boy error on the name... Apologies stuart ;)
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