Women entrepreneurs, SME owners focus on marketing, following lockdowns

Women business owners are prioritising marketing spend more than ever to reach their users, according to new data.

 The data, from the Business Chicks Community Survey in response to COVID-19, shows nearly two in three women (or 65 percent) said they were spending more on creative/ design software; email marketing CRM platforms and social media following the pandemic.

Offering a range of speakers from Facebook, Google, Hubspot, Linkedin and award-winning creative Ant Melder of independent agency Coffee Cocoa Gunpowder, Business Australia, in conjunction with Business Chicks are holding a seminar, ‘How to Get Your Marketing Working Harder in 2021’ on Thursday, February 18.

Business Chicks, Content and Marketing Manager, Briony Hunt, says while the global pandemic hit hard, Australian women are a resilient bunch, and so many created opportunities to start or pivot their businesses.

“Record numbers are now running their own show and looking at ways to expand their business,” says Ms Hunt.

Business Australia, General Manager, Content and Acquisition, Genevieve Brock, says it’s more important than ever to be targeted on your marketing approach when starting, or working to grow a business.

“We are seeing a lot of SMEs re-examining their core offering, how they deliver it and how they reach and talk to their clients,” says Ms Brock.

“We have seen business successfully transform their offering in the last year, that has prompted a re-examine of their marketing strategies as well.

“There are so many platforms where you can spend time marketing your SME, but it’s critical that there’s a clear plan, in order to maximise results.

“The best way to do this is to consider your return on investment – irrespective of whether you are doing the work yourself, or you have someone assisting.

“It’s worthwhile looking at the analytics and tracking engagement and customer numbers.

“This helps when deciding where to invest your time and energy.”

Ms Brock shares 10 tips on how to reboot your marketing strategy.

• Identify the key problem you need to solve: Do you need to find new customers, are your existing customers not returning, are your potential clients not dropping into your store, or are you hoping to get more share of your wallet. Be precise about the problem and define it.
• Identify what might be holding you back: Now that you know where your missed opportunity is, do some investigation/analysis as to what the gaps might be – have you not been advertising, is your customer experience an issue, perhaps your product is not appealing to your current customer.
• Validate your hypotheses by looking at data: You don’t need to do a fully-fledged market research study – you can get great insights simply using data like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, or simply seeing what’s trending on Facebook and Instagram. You could host your own focus group with some existing or prospective customers to understand who your brand/business appeals to/doesn’t appeal to and why – it’s also a great opportunity to understand who you’re competing with.
• Identify your target audience: Businesses often try and go after too many target audiences versus crafting their proposition around one key audience – the more specific you can be on this the more targeted and insightful your creative and media selection will be.
• Determine your budget (financial and time): The amount you spend on marketing will depend on your business goals and how much you need to stimulate customer activity, calculating your marketing spend as a proportion of your revenue can help you stay on track to ensure a profitable investment. It’s also important to consider the time you’re investing in marketing so you can calculate the return on effort.
• Determine your channel: Different channels will help achieve different outcomes – social media can be great for attracting new audiences utilising geo-targeting and demographic/firmographic insights, search engine marketing and optimisation is great for nurturing or converting customers who are close to a purchase decision and direct marketing tools like email, messenger and SMS are powerful for driving customer loyalty and repeat purchase.
• Find the right tech: Once you’ve established some wins on a small scale it’s great to consider how to scale and automate as much as possible or marketing will become very time intensive. Social media scheduling tools and trigger based direct marketing are great ways to keep an always on demand funnel for your business.
• Constantly test: If you’re investing your budget in advertising it’s very important to be constantly iterating and trying different approaches. A/B testing special offers, different creative, new audience targeting are all ways you can aim to improve your return on marketing investment and advertising efficiency.
• Obsess over your learnings not your results: You won’t always get it right, but if you constantly iterate and test one thing against a new initiative, you’ll be able to optimise your return on marketing investment over time. It’s a great way to engage your employees too as their input and observation of results helps them to feel a part of your business success.
• Repeat, refine and scale when you’re ready: Seeing positive results? Continue the cycle and carefully decide when you’re ready to scale your marketing. You’ll need to consider other cost implications like customer service, staffing costs etc so that you are striving towards profitable growth.