Doing paid marketing, such as Google Adwords or Facebook ads, are not as effective as activities to build your brand leading to a referral. However, there is room for both in an effective marketing strategy for your small business so let’s review how to use them both in a campaign.
Why are referrals?
Most small businesses rely on referrals for their new business. If you do a good job you will get clients recommending you to others, and these referrals are the best marketing you can ever get. They convert from an inquiry at between 50-80% and cost next to nothing! However, the way referrals work has massively changed over the last few years and those that haven't caught onto this change are at risk of being overtaken by their competitors.
This was highlighted to me recently when I had a call from a potential new client. Let’s call this new potential client “James”. James has been running his family physio business and been losing business to competitors steadily over the last few years. In fact, it was so bad, James was considering retiring after 25 years in the same location.
The issue was when a prospect Googled the business, you couldn't find him. There were many competitors within 1km of their location, you couldn't find James. It turns out he didn't have a website, social media or any digital presence! Wow. So even with a great reputation, 25 years’ experience in the same area and a shop front, James couldn't get enough new clients. James was losing business to competitors who had a stronger digital presence.
Therefore, when a client referred a friend to James and they tried to find him, they couldn't and would move on. Even if they found him, he didn't seem credible with his current profile and lacked a clear way for a client to buy from him. Fixing the 'findability' issues was his top priority, but then he needed to build his online trust quotient and create a clear sales path. This all takes time so paid marketing can be very useful to fill the gap.
Paid marketing
Paid marketing is great for instant traffic, but it is a lower quality investment than branding because as soon as you stop paying, you stop getting the results. With branding, it builds over time into an asset.
The first thing to decide about paid marketing is which platform will suit your situation the best. There are many options but Google Adwords and Facebook ads are the most popular and easiest to use. The type of product and target client should easily distinguish between these two.
The second action is to choose one category for your campaign. You can't target everyone you choosing a very niche area is always best for your ROI. Make sure your using the language of your customer, not what you think they type into the search box.
After working in digital marketing for 15 years I have seen some massive waste of money from companies, big and small, in paid marketing. One very large, blue IT company I worked for liked to spend all its Google search engine marketing (SEM) budget on buying ads for their product names. Every code number and product - there were hundreds. The issue with this strategy is they were already getting the organic SEO link right under the ad. Therefore, the person searching was getting the paid link and the organic link, and if they click the paid link it costs the company money which they could have been getting for free.
The lesson here is to focus your spend on what you are not getting organically. So that's not your business name as you should get that naturally. Better to focus on your customer's problems as they describe them. Focus instead on what “term” or “type of information” your prospect would search for before they know your name or product.
The last part is to decide the spend you want to invest. Use a realistic conversion rate such as the 4x 10s. That means if you want 10x sales, you need 100x hot prospects, 1,000x warm leads and 10,000 hits to your sales page. If the cost of getting 10,000 people to your sales page is higher than 10x sales, it's probably easier to ask your current clients for a referral.
This is the last in my 10x digital tips, I hope you got some value and if you missed some of them you can download them all free in one convenient eBook here.
Best of luck building your brand and business and subscribe to be part of my next content adventure a Podcast!!
Andy
P.S. If you want to chat regarding your personal brand just set up a call and I will give you some free tips for building your online assets.
