If you own or run a small to medium sized business, chances are you want to grow, right? No one ever wants to stay the same size or stay the exact same entity in a year’s time. If you do, might want to rethink that idea. Remember Kodak? They didn’t last very long post the digital age because they didn’t want to change and didn’t see the point of evolving from film cameras to digital.

Back to small businesses, the ones that keep the economy buzzing in their own way. In order to grow, you need to get new customers. In order to get new customers, your need to market your business.  You get a website, you dapple in some Google Adwords and sit back and let the masses come. Think again.

Here are 10 huge misconceptions about small and medium sized marketing that might make you want to rethink how you go about promoting your business.

1. Marketing is expensive

Marketing can be expensive if not done well. The key to marketing a business is being smart about your budget. Small and medium sized businesses, and even some large multinational companies have very tight budgets, so it’s natural that if you want to create a great piece of content you’re going to have to use all your resources and possibly get your hands dirty. With the right tools, communication and enthusiasm, you can use platforms like Canva or Fiverr to create ridiculously good looking videos and social posts. Target well on social and know who your key persona (more on personas later) for that piece of content is, and you won’t need hundreds of dollars to promote an ad just to get one or two sales out of it.

2. With marketing you get immediate results

This is probably the biggest misconception about marketing in general, no matter what size business you are. Maybe this is because we now live in a society where we need instant gratification in every facet of our lives. On average it takes about seven touchpoints with a customer to make a sale. Seven. That’s seven times your potential customer interacts with your brand in some way before they take the plunge and choose you, whether that’s searching online, an email, a social post, or seeing your ad in the local paper.  And with B2B customers it could be even more, because it’s not one person making the buying decision. So it’s never about putting up a post and just leaving your initiative to that one action. Marketing is a long game that’s all about consistency and sending out the right content at the right time to the right channel, which leads to the next misconception.

3. I need to be on every social channel

Absolutely not. You need to be on the right channel for your target market(s), and giving them the right content purpose built for that channel. So for B2C more than likely it’s Facebook, Instagram and maybe YouTube. For B2B it’s most likely LinkedIn. More to the point, if you’re a small business, do you really have time to be on every single channel, including writing a blog on your website? Ain’t nobody got time for all that! Do a few social media channels, and do them well. When you have them down pat, then consider whether your audience is on another channel.

4. I don’t have time for Social or Marketing

This is the lamest excuse for not doing any sort of marketing. Chances are you’re already doing some marketing and don’t even know it. Have branded t-shirts? That’s marketing. Have a branded vehicle? Yup, marketing. 

Everyone has a mobile phone nowadays. We’re all snapping photos here and there, and there are free tools like Hootsuite that allow you to schedule and post images and video to up to 3 social pages for free, straight from your phone. Instagram makes it even easier by allowing you to post straight onto their platform and your Facebook page or profile. It takes maybe two seconds to snap a photo. The excuse of not having time really means “this isn’t my priority, and I don’t want to put any effort into posting on social because I don’t get many likes or leads”. If that’s the case, then read misconception number 2 again.

5. I don’t need a “persona”

Yes you do. A persona is essentially what your target market would be if it were a person. Creating a persona takes very little time if you know your target market and have data to show what they’re up to. Once your personas are in place, you’ll start to think like them, and start to think of how emotionally they could be connecting with your brand, You’ll walk around the office calling your personas by a name instead of “our target customer”. As soon as you do this you’ve given them a personality, an identity, and it becomes so much easier for you to start thinking of how you can appeal to them and create a long lasting relationship.

6. Google Adwords is Marketing, and I don’t need anything else

This point might start some debate with other marketers, but Google Adwords is not marketing. It’s not called Google Marketwords now is it? Marketing and Advertising go hand in hand, but in essence advertising is pushing your message, which is what Google Adwords does. Marketing is you proving that you are the market leader, the expert in your field. You can read more about the differences between marketing and advertising here. 

But you can’t be successful with just Adwords. Anyone who says that you can is not a marketer. With the right content and publishing consistently, you should eventually see traffic to your website and business increase and the budget you use for Google adwords dropping. 

7. Social Media ads are expensive

If you’re sending ads out to a very broad audience, with poor creative, no call to action, then yeah, social ads will be expensive. Think of social media ads like a billboard on a motorway. Your customers are whizzing through their feed like they’re a car rolling down the motorway to their destination. You are essentially trying to capture a customer’s attention long enough so they slow down and potentially stop to read, watch, swipe or click on your ad. If you know who you’re talking to, are showing them something compelling and relatable, you’re not going to need much budget to get their attention. 

8. Marketing’s sole purpose is to bring in new customers

No no no no. In Business 101, you learn that a returning customer costs your business less money to retain than attracting new customer. Returning customers are some of your best marketers. They can recommend your brand to their family and friends, write up a great review of your business on Google, or even come back to you to request a new service. You’re more likely to get a sale from someone who has already worked with you and remembers you. That’s why it’s just as important to stay top of mind with your existing customer base as with attracting new ones. 

9. Video is only a “nice to have”

This isn’t 2001. You don’t need to have an entire camera crew and flashy graphics. Videos on LinkedIn get 5 times more engagement than regular image posts, and nearly as much on Facebook and Instagram. Video is the whole reason why Instagram Stories are so successful. People, now more than ever, want to have an emotional connection with the brands that want to interact with them on social.  What better way to do that than with a simple tap and film video of the local koala popping into your shop, or your favourite customer coming in on their birthday (posted with their permission of course), or even a one-on-one with the camera on why your day sucked. All of these scenarios are entirely relatable on a personal level. Still want a flashy video with cool graphics? There’s heaps of platforms like Fiverr that you can use to get a freelancer to create one for you without breaking the bank. And videos are still cheap to promote on Facebook and Instagram.

10. None of my customers care about what I have to say or what I’m up to

If you think the above is true, then its best you shut up shop and go find another profession. The best way to prove that you’re a leader in your industry is to show it. How do you do that? By showing how your products are made, why you chose that product or concept, how your product works, or why you chose a supplier to align with. Not only will your existing customers see what you’re becoming, but potential customers will see who you are and start to think “they know what they’re talking about” or “that product might fix my problem, I wonder if this place can help” or “yes! that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for”! There is someone out there that cares, they just haven’t found you yet because you haven’t been putting your business out there as its own persona.

If you’re letting any of these misconceptions lead your marketing decisions, then you’re putting your business at a serious disadvantage. Let’s work together on reversing these bad habits and creating buzz.