Drip feed marketing and what it means for your small business is the topic of this episode.
Introduction
“Hi, I’m Tracy Heatley. Thank you for listening this this Drip Feed Marketing episode of my Be Better With Tracy Heatley
podcast. The marketing podcast for small business owners who need guidance with marketing and networking.
This episode is all about drip feed marketing. When I talk about drip feed marketing, I’m talking about building your marketing communications activities over time, so that you’ve got a number of different marketing communications channels that are simultaneously working and getting results.
Marketing Communications Channels
Marketing communications channels are the marketing activities that you do to reach out to your target market. Things like social media, PR, blogs, advertising. The list is endless, but you get the gist.
It may be that you have got a ‘nice to have’ list of marketing activities that you want and need to be doing, but your marketing budget is limited right. Don’t worry, I’ve got some solutions that will help you.
It may be that you’ve got your marketing budget in place, but you’re not quite sure what to do with it. I’ve got things covered here for you too.
First thing Is First
First thing is first, please make sure that before you do anything else, that you have got an appropriate marketing strategy in place before you start investing your time and money in marketing communications activities. Even if you’re a sole trader business, you still need a strategy, otherwise, you could waste your valuable time and money. There’s a new blog on my website about why strategy is important and how to get started that you may find useful too.
So, you know what your objectives are, you’ve got your strategy in place and you’re ready to go.
It’s easy to make assumptions about where and how to spend your money on marketing. My advice, if it’s new marketing that you’ve not tried before, test it to see if it works before investing too much money.
Things To Be Aware Of With Drip Feed Marketing
Drip feed marketing is about making sure that you don’t put all your marketing eggs in one basket.
In the previous episode, I was talking about the differences between direct response and brand awareness marketing. The current situation of your business will impact the decisions about what is the best marketing mix for you right now.
Your marketing mix is the types of marketing activities that you’ve decided to include for your business. It’s your marketing mix.
Build Up Your Marketing Activities
Ideally, you want to build up your marketing activities, so that you’re introducing diverse marketing communications channels into the mix. But, for small businesses, particularly if you’re on a limited budget, this needs to be done slowly. Hence my referring to it as drip feed marketing.
There are a few crucial reasons for this:
- You don’t want waste money on marketing that’s not working, so you need to try, test, monitor and evaluate. Sometimes, if you do too much too soon it can be difficult to do this.
- It’s good to monitor how much time your chosen marketing activities take up. Especially if you’re doing your marketing for yourself and you’re not quite ready to employ or outsource just yet. Even if you are ready to outsource some aspects of your marketing, you need to control your marketing spend, so building things gradually can help. Let’s take social media, for example, this can be a very cost-effective way of reaching out to your target market. However, it does need regular time allocating to it for it to be successful. Even with social media, I’d focus on a drip feed approach. Trying different platforms, with different messages, at various times of the day, so that you can see what’s working.
- If you do too much too soon you may find that it all becomes overwhelming and time consuming.
- On top of that you could potentially overachieve and get so much business that you can’t cope with the increase in demand. So, if you build things slowly over time, you’ll be able to monitor the increased in demand and put plans in place to cope with it. Either by taking on new employees or by outsourcing. Overachieving on your marketing goals will be a great position to be in when you’ve got everything in place to cope wit the growth.
More Benefits Of Drip Feed Marketing
Quite often small business owners, like yourself, have limited time and money to spend on marketing. So, drip feed marketing, means that you introduce, monitor, make sure you’re getting a return on investment. Then you can re-invest a proportion of your increased profits to introduce more marketing activities and so on.
I guess what I’m saying is that you don’t have do it all at once. If you’ve budget, the time, and the infrastructure to go full out with your marketing, that’s great.
If you’ve not, that’s okay too, just start off small and build gradually! The tortoise and hare story stings to mind here.
If You’re Still Not Sure Where To Turn With Your Marketing
If you’re still not sure where to turn, then seek some advice from a marketing specialist like myself. My online marketing mentoring clients are all small business owners like you. Sometimes, just bouncing ideas off someone who knows what they’re talking about can be a massive relief. We all have our own areas of expertise when it comes to business, so get some advice from me or someone like me that can provide guidance specifically for you and your business.
If part of your marketing communications is networking the same applies with this too. Networking is part of your marketing mix, so make sure that you’re continuously drip-feeding ideas about how your networking contacts can help you get referrals. If you are into networking or you’re just getting started, do go back and listen to my earlier episodes, titled How To Be A Networking Ninja.
Why I Covered This Topic
The main reason I wanted to cover this topic in this podcast episode, is because I know that marketing can be overwhelming for small business like you. You didn’t set your business up to be doing marketing, but it’s a massive part of running a successful small business.
I often see my marketing clients in the early days of working me how daunting marketing seems to them. Once we start breaking things down into small chunks and steadily introducing marketing success to the business, they feel like a weigh has been lifted from their shoulders.
So, please take the pressure of yourself. You don’t have to do it all at once!
Little and often is better than nothing at all.
No matter how small, how big, how long you’ve been trading, what you’re marketing budget is, or what you hope to achieve, there is a suitable marketing mix for every single business.
The time it takes to build up your workable and effective marketing communications channels will vary from one business to the next. So, get started, start small to build big.
Remember, monitoring, evaluating, and changing what’s not working is crucial, so keep your eye on the results to avoid wasting your valuable time and money on anything that’s not working. Make sure that you re-invest and boost the marketing activities that are working too.
If I can be of help, please do get in touch. I’ve got room for a few more online marketing mentoring clients, so if you need my help contact me via my website and I’ll be delighted to hear from you. The website is www.tracyheatley.com
Remember that you can always win a free online one-to-one 40-minute marketing mentoring session by subscribing to this podcast and leaving me a review on Audible or iTunes.
I do hope that this podcast episode has been of use to you. I’m Tracy Heatley. Thank you for listening to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast”.
Better Business, Better You!
