Marketing in small business is one of the most misunderstood areas of the business development process. It’s small wonder why. The search term marketing in small business has 2,150,000,000 pages that talk about that topic.
There is much information for thousands of small business owners searching for information.
In this article, I’ll clarify the key points of marketing.
We’ll look at the real job of marketing in small business, give you a reason to care about your marketing mission, you’ll discover how to market your small business more effectively by educating your potential clients and we’ll look at why potential clients are searching online.
The real job of marketing
At its core, marketing is straightforward to understand. The real job of marketing is to attract a qualified and interested potential client into your sales pipeline.
Whether you sell online or through direct selling, your business is always in need of qualified and interested prospects. Marketing is how you’ll attract those qualified and interested people to your business.
Why should I care about marketing?
As a small business owner, you have a million things to deal with every day. Notable business authority and best-selling author, Jeffrey Fox, in his book, How to Make Big Money in Small Business, suggests that small business owners practice what he calls the 60-30-10 rules.
He suggests you spend your day allocating your time to blocks of 60, 30, and 10 minutes.
For example: when running a business, spend 60% of your time on marketing and selling — 30 % on making and providing the products, and 10% on management and administration.
Fox tells us to remember that when you waste time you waste money. Know how to spend your time wisely.
By allocating your time correctly, marketing will get done. When marketing gets done, you have a consistently full sales pipeline. With a full sales pipeline, revenues remain consistently strong.
When revenues are consistently reliable, you don’t worry about business development and can focus on innovation, new services, or products, to make your business stand out from the crowd.
Substantial revenues and a stand out business are why you should care about marketing in a small business.
Educate to advertise
At this point, you may be thinking, all this sounds great; but I’m not a marketing expert, how can I market my business effectively?
That’s a good question. To answer it, let’s look at what you are an expert in.
You’re an expert in the product or service you offer. 
You know more about that topic than 98% of people. You have a deep understanding of how your product or service works when it’s needed, and how to use it most effectively.
With all that knowledge, your marketing and client attraction model can be as simple as educating people searching for answers to questions. You have solutions and can share them as a method of marketing.
Record a quick video on your smartphone showing how to accomplish a step in a process you know well.
Take a photo with your phone of you on the job and briefly describe what you did to resolve a challenge.
If you’re in a business related, share a short write up on a topic you know well to educate people in your niche on a topic they may not know.
Keep it simple, but keep it consistent and know that you don’t have to be an expert in everything. You only need to be an expert in the one thing you know well – your business.
Why people search online
People are searching for information online. They are considering a purchase or looking for answers that lead to a purchase.
What they are asking for when visiting your website or calling your business is, “Support me on my journey to purchase. Give me the help I need, and I will learn to trust you.”
They are looking for help, support, guidance, and direction. You want to be the person who provides that for them to generate interest, build credibility, gain trust, and ultimately leverage your vast knowledge and expertise on your topic to acquire a new client.
One step at a time
We covered many exciting ideas in this article.
You learned that the real job of marketing is to attract a qualified and interested potential client to your business.
We looked at why you should care about marketing in the first place and how to manage the time it takes to accomplish marketing consistently.
You found out that when you educate to advertise, you are focused on one thing that you know well. That one thing you know well is your business.
We explored the reason people are searching online for answers; to gain support, guidance, and direction on a specific need.
With all that said, one of the most important points to remember is that you’re not an expert in everything.
Focus on what you are an expert in, learn what you can to increase your skills, and leverage your time effectively by bringing in experts to work with you on areas that you don’t understand.
For example, I build sales processes for a company who does childhood occupational therapy programs. They wanted to optimize their website as we developed their sales process program.
They brought in me for sales process creation and an SEO company for website optimization of the copy and content I was creating for them.
The business owner leveraged her time effectively. Because she did, she was able to focus on the one thing she was expert in; childhood occupational therapy.
She educated her potential clients, filled her sales pipeline, and grew her small business efficiently by leveraging the 60, 30, 10-minute rule.
Get the help you need in marketing both online and offline.
If you’re not familiar with how a working sales process leads your potential client from interest to closed sale, bring in an expert in that space.
If you’re not a writer get copywriting support.
Same with video, if you don’t have the time or interest to create short videos, hire a local company in your area to help you create them.
Break down your needs into tiny steps.
List them in order of importance.
Take one small step at a time to accomplish each need individually.
In no time you’ll have developed your market a small business plan of action to increase revenues for your small business.