# General Business Category > Marketing Forum > [Question] Small business marketing

## Mark Atkinson

So we have got to the point in our new business where we have accumulated some spare funds which we want to allocate fully to marketing (bearing in mind Red Giant is only 3 months old).  As soon as our website is complete (very nearly there) we are going to begin with full fledged marketing.

What I would like to find out from you is what your opinion is on the most effective ways to spend this money (+- 10k) in order to market a small business.  Let's keep in mind that we are in the design (web, corporate, photography) industry and it's an extremely saturated market.  

What we have in mind at the moment is the following:

1.  *Facebook advertising.*  Great since it is able to target our ideal customers specifically, and we have an awesome special to market to them.  This is on top of my list at the moment. 

2. *Marketing Motor.*  This program comes highly recommended by Dave and Neville.  I'm interested in trying it out, HOWEVER I am not so sure whether it would be as effective in our overcrowded niche.  :Frown:  It does help that we aren't just "web designers" and that we target a specific niche within the industry, being small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

3. *Pamphlet promotions.*  Not so sure on the effectiveness of this approach. If we did decide to do it, it would be a full fledged thing at a busy street corner/shopping mall with promotion girls and big signs and a lot of hype, rather than some random walking around lackadaisically handing out flyers here and there. 


We do have other ideas but these are the main ones, bearing in mind our budget and target market.  We are also wanting to target South Africans, and more specifically, South African business owners at the moment.

Do you guys have any better ideas or comments on the above ideas? I'd just like to make sure that I'm spending our limited funding wisely rather than using a shotgun approach to marketing. 

Perhaps you have better methods for marketing small businesses which are low-cost, yet effective methods for bringing in new leads?

----------


## Dave A

You're certainly laying some groundwork with your online activities, so I'm thinking about what you could try offline.

Grab a yellow pages, pick niche industries, Google the company's name to see what their current exposure is, and then phone the ones you think you could help, maybe?
I'd think top prize would be big yellow pages spenders with no detectable online presence.

Once you've refined the drill, then hire someone to do the tele-canvassing.

Just a thought.

----------

Mark Atkinson (09-Jun-11)

----------


## Mark Atkinson

Thanks Dave.  :Smile:   I have actually drawn up a whole marketing plan dealing with our marketing procedures in both the short and long term.  It does include cold calling and such things.  What I'm trying to do is "kick start" the business with some form of paid advertising.  Basically, I want to get Red Giant out in front of as many potential customers in as little time as possible.  

I know that I'm not going to see amazing results immediately, but while we have the funds available I want to make us of them to advertise effectively in conjunction with our "free" advertising efforts such as cold-calling, emailing etc. 

Essentially I'm asking what the best way to utilize R10k worth of marketing money would be.  I see that Marketing Motor isn't accepting any new clients at the moment, but that they have another program running called Sales Motor.  At $299 though, it seems a bit steep.  Makes me wonder whether they cost-benefit ratio would be favourable.  :Hmmm:

----------


## Dave A

> I see that Marketing Motor isn't accepting any new clients at the moment, but that they have another program running called Sales Motor.  At $299 though, it seems a bit steep.  Makes me wonder whether they cost-benefit ratio would be favourable.


Giving your segment, I'm not sure they'd take you on with their sales motor deal anyway. It's a full service package and they have already turned away would-be clients where they see problems in producing a healthy ROI.

----------


## IanF

Mark give google adwords a try since you prepay you can limit your spend but you need a website to point to. Pamphlets are like ads you need to touch customers 8 times to be effective. 
Another thing which works is competitions to get prospects contacts with 10K you could offer an Ipad. Something like best tagline wins an Ipad.

----------


## Mark Atkinson

> Giving your segment, I'm not sure they'd take you on with their sales motor deal anyway. It's a full service package and they have already turned away would-be clients where they see problems in producing a healthy ROI.


Well I have sent them an email asking for an honest opinion on whether or not they would be able to do anything worthwhile for us.  Either way, I'd be interested to hear their views.  :Smile: 




> Mark give google adwords a try since you prepay you can limit your spend but you need a website to point to.


Google Adwords is already in the marketing strategy.  :Smile:  The problem, however, is finding keywords that aren't that competitive within our niche in order to run a cost-effective campaign.  We've tried a campaign before for our original web design venture.  We targeted a bunch of the most competitive keywords around and needless to say, the campaign failed miserably.  This time around I will be sure to go about the campaign slightly more intelligently.  :Wink: 

Also, although I think your suggestion for giving away something like an iPad has merit, I don't think it's viable at this time.  You need a pretty big following on Facebook/Twitter to get something like that going Viral.  Even then, people often just participate for the prize and then forget all about your business thereafter. In other words, it doesn't target a segment of the market in particular.

Whenever I think of giving away a prize via a competition, I always think of the opportunity cost. Let's just say my thoughts generally get the better of me.  :Wink:

----------


## Mark Atkinson

Just spent about 40 minutes on the phone with Peter Curruthers from Marketing Motor.  He seems to be of the opinion that the Marketing Motor program could work for us.  He said they are reopening the program next week. 

Had a fascinating discussion with him regarding how we might go about successfully marketing a business in our field.  I think we will probably give the program a run and see how we go from there.  :Smile:

----------


## BryanCasson

> We targeted a bunch of the most competitive keywords around and needless to say, the campaign failed miserably


Yes, Google will not just let you target any bunch of competitive keywords. You can however get all the keywords you want with a proper strategy and a proper Adwords Manager. Adwords is almost always cost effective if you have a professional doing the work.

----------


## Nienke

> This time around I will be sure to go about the campaign slightly more intelligently.


Mark, I hope you share your knowledge, and won't mind to let me know how you'll go about deciding your keywords more intelligent then last time. Maybe I should review mine.

----------


## Nienke

Oh, and please let us know how it went with Marketing Motor

----------


## Mark Atkinson

> Mark, I hope you share your knowledge, and won't mind to let me know how you'll go about deciding your keywords more intelligent then last time. Maybe I should review mine.


The idea is to do keyword research using a keyword tool such as Google's keyword tool  to search for keywords related to a broad keyword that you enter. The idea is to choose keywords that pertain to your business which have more local searches (if you're a local business) per month but a lower competition.  

Then you need to make sure that your Google ads (the text) is relevant to your keyword which is relevant to the landing page.

It's no simple task. It's a case of continuously monitoring and tweaking your Adwords campaign in order to attain the best results.

I am still struggling with my campaign for web design.




> Oh, and please let us know how it went with Marketing Motor


I must be honest, I'm probably going to cancel my Marketing Motor subscription.  I'm not happy with the results I have received this far.  The quality scores I've attained with the program are dreadful and I'm being forced to pay R40+ per click for some ads. 

That's not to say that it won't work for other fields, though. I'm just saying that for web design, it hasn't worked at all. And I don't feel like I've received sufficient guidance from the guys at Marketing Motor to help me make the program more effective (despite several efforts to get that guidance).  Not happy with the "generic answers" I tend to receive from them.

They obviously have a lot of other satisfied clients in less competitive fields, though. I believe Neville and Dave are two such examples.  :Smile:

----------


## BryanCasson

> I am still struggling with my campaign for web design.


Yes Mark, Web Design is a tricky one. I too struggled in the beginning with this one, but now I finally have quality scores of between 8-10. The main reason is that the competition is quite large. You need to break the campaign down to become highly targeted. Eg. *Johannesburg Web Design* going to a page on your design services in JHB, or *Wordpress Web Design* going to your wordpress web design services. Once these sub topics start to perform then you can go and try add *Web Design*.... presto, quality score of 8/10 rather than 4/10 on the first attempt.

----------


## Mark Atkinson

Hi Bryan,

I have done that. I've got a lot of keywords targeting smaller niches within web design and pages for each of those keywords (all created using the Marketing Motor program). Unfortunately my quality scores are dropping instead of rising, despite a decent CTR on some of them.

----------


## AmithS

With regards to facebook I hear it does not really give results as people prefer it as a social tool.

I cannot remember the company name but an international company allocated approx $100 million to a facebook campaign and later on admitted that it was money wasted as it brought them no results...

----------


## Mark Atkinson

I disagree.

I have seen great results from Facebook for both my businesses.  I guess it has to do with your landing page and your communication with your fans.

----------


## BryanCasson

> Unfortunately my quality scores are dropping instead of rising, despite a decent CTR on some of them.


  Yes this is a normal factor in very dense industries. It does not mean that you did anything wrong, it just means that the historical record for that particular keyword is low. Many people have used that keyword in un-relevant instances in the past which has brought the keyword quality score down on default. Keywords like this are less likely to bring the quality score of your entire camapign down as the quality score was determined on the historical actions of that keyword in general and not something you did wrong.

----------

