It’s a new year, and you’re trying to figure out the best route to take your marketing as a small or mid-sized business, among all the other strategic plans you’re making and implementing right now. Let me share this with you, as you consider your options:  the longer I’ve been in business, the greater value I’ve placed on having a nice blend of internal and external resources on your marketing team.

It’s really important to be able to balance and marshal your internal and external resources out appropriately to give yourself the best opportunity to be successful in the marketplace. First, you need to understand your internal resources and their capabilities. In many small businesses, this may be the owner or founder, or even someone with a different job title than marketing (I’ve seen everything from salespeople to admins who happen to have a knack for this field). No matter their role or background, if someone has a penchant for your brand and how it should be expressed, they should command your respect.

The best part about your internal resources is that they are stewards of your brand. It’s important to them, so they will consider your brand their mission. But are they perfect? Of course, not—none of us are. Sometimes, we can have a blind spot internally, or especially in this era of constantly expanding digital marketing opportunities, we may have a skill set deficit. Regardless of the reason, I find that seeking external resources to blend in with your team can be a real difference-maker, as everyone can play to their strengths and have each other’s backs.

While your internal folks will understand your product or service better than any external person ever could, your external people often bring a missing perspective to your strategic preparation. Often, that missing voice happens to be that of your customer—as a lay person, external marketers can often more closely relate to your customer than you can. They aren’t as prone to use industry vernacular or take certain pieces of knowledge for granted. In addition to adding to your skill set firepower, your external teammates help keep you grounded.

As you can see, having a good team of internal and external marketers, and balancing their skills and perspectives accordingly, can really give you a more well-rounded view of your product or service, how it’s perceived by the public, and how you can be most successful marketing it.

Regardless of medium, strategies, and tactics, having a well-rounded team of external and internal resources really will provide you the tools as a small business to be more successful.  Don’t think you have to do it all yourself, but also, don’t think that it’s best to pitch everything over the fence to an agency while you handle the rest of the business and its needs.

From our team at Celero, best wishes for great success for you and your team in the coming year.

Scott Farace November 20, 2019 If you’re a small business owner, there are a lot of different marketing tools that are available for you that happen to be high-performance, cost-effective, and easy to execute.  Some of these methods are tried-and-true, while others are newer and already proving to deliver.

Cause Marketing

I’ve always loved cause marketing for the reasons it helps connect you to your audience in a meaningful and impactful way. There are so many ways to get involved   in the community where you do business.

For a small business that could be anything from sponsoring a local high school fundraiser, the local relay for life event, or working with the local homeless shelter. What’s great about this marketing tool is that it enables your business to meet your customers where they live and reside, touch them close to their hearts, and in many cases, involve your entire company, too. Instead of always being salesy, you’re promoting the organizations and missions they hold dear. 

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a newer option that’s available to all business owners, no matter the size of your business, due to the democratizing effect of technology. You can find options at any price point

Once you define your target segments, you can set a realistic budget, test messages and different delivery techniques like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, and track your results to see what resonates with your target audience.

Content Marketing

Using content marketing to express your brand and value proposition is now essential for businesses of all sizes. When you’re able to have the right content, whether it’s a blog, a podcast, a white paper, or short video, you’ll be able to find out quickly what resonates with your audience.

Best of all, today’s digital world provides you with low-cost ways to distribute this wide spectrum of content, whether it’s through an optimized website, PR distribution engine, and especially social media. Social media is the optimal no-to-low cost  (by boosting posts or promoting tweets, for example) vehicle  to  deliver content to a very homed-in  target audience.

At Celero, we enjoy helping small and mid-sized businesses, the backbone of the American economy, compete and win. I’ve been there myself, running my own boutique agency for several years, and I know the pressures that small business owners face. I’m always happy to share any experience or expertise that might help relieve those pressures and foster growth!

Scott Farace October 28, 2019 For small business owners just beginning their marketing journey, setting your company’s brand apart should be the number-one priority. In nearly three decades of strategic marketing for businesses and nonprofits of various sizes, I’ve seen day-in and day-out the importance of developing a unique and consistent brand message to connect authentically with audiences. A strong brand can drive growth and it starts with determining your business’ point of difference.

Starting out, building your brand will take some analysis of where your company stands and its biggest strengths. It’s crucial to ask yourself, “What makes my business special or different in the market? What makes it the best of its kind?” After homing in on that factor, your next step is to expound upon it to create a brand message. Then, you can circulate that message to your entire organization from sales to customer service, and product teams. It’s vital that the message be cohesive across all corners of the organization for brand consistency. And even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, branding yourself can pay huge dividends early on. When people can tell you take yourself and your business seriously, they’ll respect you for the professional you are.

Once everyone in your organization is familiar with your brand message, you can begin conveying it across various marketing tools. Utilize digital marketing, social media marketing, and traditional marketing methods to reach the widest possible target audience on a daily basis. The more prospective customers you reach, the better. And once again, I can’t stress enough how important it is for your messaging to be consistent and fully integrated, across your sales materials, product sheets, websites, direct mail programs, and anywhere else you talk about yourself.

If you’re not sure where to allocate marketing funds early on, you can make things simple. Think about where you touch the most customers, and then work backwards from there. Whether that means your staff, your website, your store, or your team members who are out visiting people, you should always play to your strengths so you can sharpen them. Just keep it simple, and then build as you go along. 

Focus on those touchpoints where you already have strong audiences who are likely to be loyal to your brand. If your website gets the most visitors, allocate dollars toward web design. If a particular team interacts with the most customers, put in the time to train them on speaking to that brand message. That way, regardless of whether you’ve got a dollar or ten million dollars to spend, you can focus on getting the most out of it with the most effective possible use of your marketing dollars.

These steps will help set your business apart by creating a cohesive, distinctive brand to build loyalty, which will in turn boost revenue. If you follow this path, there’s no telling how far your business’ success will take you. Just focus, keep it simple, and execute. While the rewards of branding aren’t often immediate, you’ll be surprised by how quickly you do see results.