Marking advice from a rookie in small based business

Finding the right marketing company: 4 things we learned in 2019 hiring out marketing & 4 ways to help build your brand in 2020 and into the next decade as a small business owner.

Mar·ket·ing /ˈmärkədiNG/

(n.) An important step in business,  promoting and selling the products or services, including market research and advertising for a company.

This is our first time hiring a marketing company and there are positive and negative things about out sourcing your marketing out that we have learned in the first year with paying marketing companies to help build our brand and social media presence. 

We wanted to build our brand as an Urban Micro Farm as soon as we opened our doors November of 2018 and knew within our small network of friends and followers we needed help. 

4 Takeaways from hiring our first marketing person & company: 

#1 thing we learned:  It’s good to start trying Random Marketing Strategies but don’t sign any contracts or go all in. Use less than 10% of sales

We tried out some random social media dude who had a nice following and what seemed to be a food blogger, and his rates were affordable; however he just clicked and followed a bunch of randoms and didn’t help keep our organic follower approach that we were going for low. 

He claimed that you need to follow a bunch of people to gain a following but that is not true. You can build your presence without following people.

We spent $120, over 2 months and honestly it was not worth the added followers or he didn’t do anything else for a service besides follow random humans. He did follow some local business and residents but too many randoms and no company growth in terms of social media presence or brand building.

Now we have a new Marketing company and we have signed a contract for over a year but there are a few things we wished they did better but we can’t make any changes until our contract is up which is for 1 year. However, we will have 4 months until our meeting and we can compare where our DA (Domain Analytic ) Score is at and if it has improved since we started with them. We pay $350 a month and there are a few things we wish could be better but this is our first time working with a real marketing company and really have nothing to compare it to just are expectations of what we would like to see accomplished. 

-We like our old website , they said we needed a new website – and they would design it for us pro bono -however it is still not complete and we signed up in April.  There are things we were suppose to do on our end, but now with the new website design I don’t know how to fix or change things that normally I would of been able to. So it’s frustrating on our end as an entrepreneur who usually does all the jobs to not be in control or know how to change things that ( if we were to just keep it simple, I feel like we would of been in the same place with or without the marketing help and with $4200 more dollars in our pockets) For the most part they have put out some really great posts and shown us how to create a schedule for our blogging and the website looks pretty good, just needs some help to make it more user friendly. I do believe they have increased our DA (Domain Analytic) Score which improves one’s businesses chances of landing on the first page , in the number 1 spot during a google search when some one searches for what you are selling.

#2 Don’t post at the same time as your marketing team. Time your posts so you can have multiple posts go out over 24 hours time and not stacked on top of each other in the same hour. 

#3 Be Patient and communicate with your New Marketing Team, especially if you are a little fish in the big marketing sea. You might have expectations of what you want your marketing team to accomplish but double check the fine print in the contract and know exactly what you are paying for. 

#4 Write down what you want out of your marketing Team and be open to find the group that will help expand your brand into the next decade. Things we want in our next marketing company:

1. Solve website issues promptly
2. 7 plus social media posts per day (facebook, instagram, linked in, tiktok)
3. Content Creation including video
4. open and friendly communication
5. reasonable , affordable pricing
6. no annual contract (can put marketing on hold)

4 ways to help Build your Brand presence in 2020 and into the next decade:

#1 Approach local influencers and celebrity and provided your service for free with no expectations. These two elements our key. You need to be completely genuine and not have any other motives besides helping the person you are contacting with your business. If you DM them with your intentions and are true to your word it will all be worth it.  You might even have a new friendship in the works if you truly love what you are doing. People love supporting one another at the things they do best. 

#2 Post More than once a day. We are still working this out but I have heard 7 plus posts a day on each platform is what will help build your branding presence across all social media platforms.  You don’t have to create 7 pieces of new content just don’t be afraid to post something more than once in various ways. For example, take a screen shot of your recent blog post. Did you know you can even record your screen and make a video of your recent blog post to share that on linked in, instagram and or facebook.  Remember each different platform should be treated a little differently so the type of video you are posting is relevant to the medium. Keep your linked in profile professional, instagram and facebook can be treated both professionally and personally but know who your audience will be. Keep it Kosher people!

#3 Use 7+ good relevant hashtags per post every time, don’t get lazy. Your hashtags is what gets people to see you and hopefully like your post.  I think you need over 50 comments and likes to even think about making the explore page on instagram. Those hashtags generating apps are great but can get redundant. Use hashtags that are relevant to what you are posting and or selling. Use hashtags that have at least 300-10,000 uses. Tagging only hashtags that reach 1M or more does not help as much as you think. Hashtag pro tip: Hide 10+ additional hashtags in your story behind the picture to drive traffic. Also, Use a hashtag generator to save time posting hashtags.

#4 – We all need to be using tiktok in 2020. This platform is going to blow up and help you gain organic reach on a platform that has not been overrun by ads and algorithms. We haven’t tiktoked yet but have been watching and trying to figure out the angle we are going to take when it comes to the tiktok platform. 

Keep booming life.