As a startup founder or a small business owner, you must be asking yourself
❓ How much marketing do I need to do?
❓ What is a reasonable spend on marketing for my business?
❓ What kind of marketing do I need to focus on?
❓ Do I need marketing at all?
Daria Partas, co-founder of Solid Water marketing agency:
"I was recently having a conversation with a friend who owns a B2B real estate development company. She was contemplating the idea of starting a retail business but the required marketing spend was a turnoff. She said ‘I love b2b as you don’t need marketing’.
Suddenly, my inner marketing nerd got the ick.
Marketing is not just advertising on Instagram. It starts from your name, your website or a shop window and permeates each step of a business communication.
As a business, your marketing covers everything from the name of your company to choosing a logo to defining your price point and a product line, to advertising. Most business owners and founders wouldn’t question the need for a company name but when it comes to initiating the outreach, questions begin to swarm and the main one is ‘where do I focus my attention and how do I spend the budget most efficiently'.
🚨 Spoiler alert! There is no need to do it all at once. And in this edition of the newsletter, we will talk more about what actually does make sense.
Choosing your mix of marketing tools: where to start
The simplest way to start is to set up some benchmarks - what are your competitors doing already? Take a look at thebusinesses of similar size in your market segment:
1️⃣ Who do you regard as an example of best practice?
2️⃣ Do they have a website and what does it look like?
3️⃣ Are they collecting emails from website visitors and what sort of messages do they send as a follow-up?
4️⃣ What are they doing on social media, how many followers do they have and what sort of content is the most engaging?
5️⃣ Do they advertise on social media or Google?
Most digital advertising platforms have open libraries of ad creatives where you can look up any business registered as an advertiser and see what sort of ad campaigns they are conducting right now.
This is really your starting point when you are thinking of launching advertising campaigns for your business. There is no one recipe for all, some businesses rely heavily on social media ads such as fashion retail in mass market segments but, again, some brands (more niche, high-end and exclusive for example) build their relationship with end customers via alternative channels. In any case, checking what your competitors are doing might give you some pointers as to where to start.
If you need help in conducting a benchmark analysis and selecting the right blend of marketing tools for your business, book a 30-minute call with our agency.
Baseline marketing infrastructure
Once you have checked your competitors, you'll have a clear view of market standards among industry leaders. For example, if you're a boutique hotel, you'll need a consistent brand, a well-designed website, and active social media channels like Instagram and Pinterest.
These elements are your non-negotiable essentials to ensure customers can easily discover your business and make bookings. This foundation is crucial for everything else, especially outreach campaigns. Without it, your marketing efforts won't succeed.
Customer journey mapping
All businesses are on a mission of solving a customer’s problem. Modern marketing is about integrating your brand into the customer’s problem-solving journey at the right time with the right message. Marketing should start where there are the most coincidences.
Anastasia Dobronravova, Head of Strategic Marketing at Solid Water:
"Let’s take a look at a case study of one of our clients.
A newly established elite skin care clinic in a posh central London neighbourhood is looking to build a customer base.
What are the ways this customer may look for skin care services? They might
❶ google “best skincare treatments pre-wedding” or “best facials in Chelsea”
❷ follow lifestyle influencers for beauty tips
❸ get a recommendation from a friend.
To capture her interest, the clinic should ensure it appears in relevant search results, possibly through paid search campaigns and digital publicity. This can be complemented by small-scale and carefully curated influencer campaigns on Instagram.
If the consultation and treatment go well, the clinic should follow up with an email, offering a discount for future treatments in exchange for completing a survey, and request a Google review. To retain the customer, the clinic can use social media, email marketing, and VIP events to keep her engaged and encourage repeat visits.
Anna Chernykh, Marketing Manager at Solid Water:
"Customer journey mapping is one exercise which gives you the best pointers and prevents you from wasting your hard-earned cash on things that don’t work. Although doing your competitor’s analysis is something we recommend to all our clients to get them going, it is important to avoid simply copy pasting someone else’s mistakes and delusions. It is not a given that your competitor knows best.
The question is - who would know best? And the answer is simple - your customer.
Here are my two key pieces of advice for all small businesses:
Client interviews are an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the specific triggers that influence their purchasing decisions. This will help you direct the marketing efforts to working with these triggers by fine-tuning your messages and promotions. Moreover, interviews give you a unique understanding of the emotional perception of your product, which is crucial for the creative output (ads and social media posts) that truly resonates with the audience."
The conundrum of a marketing budget
Budgets are always a difficult question for smaller businesses. Often, especially, when you are just starting out, your cost-benefit ratio is likely to be a source of continuous frustration. Also, small businesses often neglect and, therefore, lack basic data infrastructure that would help them calculate the ROI & manage marketing investments more wisely, but even those who have it, find it hard to justify ‘long-term effect’ spends like digital PR, influencers & events.
So here is the formula we recommend to our clients 💰:
1️⃣ Take historical data of how much you need to invest in marketing to attract enough sales to break even.
2️⃣ Add 20% for tests that can either bring significant incremental value or fail.
3️⃣ Add another 10-15% for awareness campaigns.
💡 If historical data is unavailable, start with the channels that bring short term ROI - Paid Search, Paid Social, partnerships, referral programs.
Maria Tsarkova, co-founder at Solid Water marketing agency:
"Here is an example of a niche perfume brand for demonstration purposes:
On average they invested circa £8000 into paid digital channels a month with 2.5 ROI.
Solid Water suggested adding £1600 for 2 monthly experiments across these channels (with the view to scale the best-performing one).
They also allocated £1000/month to start testing influencer marketing - during the first month, the Solid Water team approached several micro-influencers; during the second month, the team spent all of this monthly budget on one influencer of a higher caliber but also potentially higher value.
This way the business continues with a healthy cash flow from established marketing channels while maintaining brand awareness and testing additional opportunities along the way."
Growth marketing approach for small business
Although the term ‘growth marketing’ emerged as a way of doing marketing at tech startups which in theory can scale indefinitely (as they are digital-native businesses), we successfully apply this approach to clients operating brick-and-mortar businesses such as hotels, that have natural capacity restraints (number of rooms in a hotel cannot increase).
In fact, we think that a growth marketing approach is the only way a small business could ensure its marketing budget is spent wisely.
⏳ Efficient use of limited resources
Instead of spreading resources thin on expensive and lengthy campaigns, growth marketing helps focus on tactics that bring quick and tangible results. You're not just present in the market — you're investing in what really works. The cornerstone of success here is identifying the North Star Metric, the main metric that reflects the true growth of your business. For example, for a hotel this could be the number of bookings, or occupancy rate. Focusing on this metric allows you to concentrate on actions that bring maximum effect.
🔀 Flexibility and adaptability
Small businesses often face the need to quickly adapt to market changes. Growth marketing offers rapid iteration and hypothesis testing, allowing you to quickly find new sources of growth and avoid costly mistakes. Instead of investing in long-term strategies with uncertain results, you can focus on short-term experiments that provide quick feedback and help fine-tune your course. This reduces risks and increases chances of success, especially when your resources are limited.
🧑🏻 Customer retention
Attracting new customers is only half the battle. Growth marketing also focuses on retention and repeat sales, which is critically important for small businesses where every customer is worth their weight in gold. Using analytics and personalized approaches, you'll be able to understand your audience more deeply, anticipate their needs, and adapt your products and promotions to their preferences. This helps increase customer loyalty and creates a foundation for long-term relationships.