Are you ready to start marketing your business? Hiring a marketing agency is often the next step small business owners take when it’s time to scale their business. These owners prepare themselves by completing extensive research on the top digital marketing agencies in their surrounding area, but often fall short when it comes to preparing themselves. Most often, they haven’t thought through how they want to represent their business online. Digital marketing is an investment worth making, but only if you enter the conversation prepared. Succeeding Small is here to help you gain a deep understanding of your business so you can take it to the next level!
Here at Succeeding Small, we understand that marketing can be seen as an inconvenience for small business owners which is why they turn to the experts to handle their marketing needs. Whether you need a new website, social media management, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Whatever digital marketing service you’re looking for, you’ll be asked these 6 questions. Answering these questions as thoroughly as possible will help your marketing agency get ready for this chapter while also providing them with the foundation necessary to create a successful marketing strategy. If you are unsure of your answers, don’t worry, Succeeding Small can help you come up with something great!
Getting to Know Your Business
It is important that your marketing agency has a clear understanding of the ins and outs of your business, but how are they supposed to know this information if you don’t know it yourself? Let’s take a deep dive into your business and show the world why your business aligns with them beyond consumerism. These 6 questions will help build essential reciprocity between the Client and Marketer.
1. What Are Your Company Values?
Your company’s values are the entity of your brand, voice, and customer experience. This is pertinent information to your digital marketing specialist as it needs to be communicated effectively through your marketing efforts. If you’re trying to figure out what these are for your small business, think about what your company stands for and why it does what it does for its customers. Your core values will serve as a compass for all internal and external processes – therefore, deserves to be displayed in your online presence.
2. What Are Your Company Goals?
It is important to have defined goals not only for your own business practices but also for the purpose of measuring the success of your digital marketing endeavors. Your goals will give your marketing agency a destination for their roadmap and allow them to determine the best route to get there. Unique goals require different approaches, and your digital marketing expert will help establish a plan of action to achieve them, but first, they must understand what they mean to you.
3. What Problem Are You Facing?
Everyone turning to digital marketing is facing a problem, whether they realize it or not. A “problem” can be something as trivial as wanting to simply keep up with the digital world or something as significant as needing a new local SEO strategy for lead generation; one way or the other there is a problem needing to be solved and the sooner you can identify what exactly it is, your digital marketing specialist can help come up with a custom solution that fits your goals.
4. What Problem Are You Solving and How?
A small business defines its purpose in this enormous world by solving its customer’s problems. This purpose can help curate a brand identity that not only builds authority but also trust as an industry leader. The value you offer your community can help give your digital marketer the leverage they need to differentiate you from your competitors. You may be solving the same problem as the ones you share the market with, but then show will set you apart. This is not always easy to define in words, but your agency can help.
5. Who Are Your Competitors?
This brings us to our next question, who are your competitors? By sharing details on your industry and who is taking up the largest market share, your digital marketing expert will then see who they are up against. Competitor research is not dissimilar to the idea of keeping your enemies closest to you. It is important to understand why someone might choose them over you, but invaluable to understand why someone would choose you over them. This knowledge will help your agency create an online reputation that can not only compete but ultimately stands out.
6. Who is your Target Audience?
This question is arguably the most important out of all of them from a marketing standpoint. Knowing where to point your marketing efforts will give your marketer a clear vision of whose attention they want to capture and how they can add value to their lives. While this question holds great importance, it can also be the hardest to accurately answer. The first step is to consider who you’re solving problems for, and then take it a step further and identify why they have that problem in the first place. It is critical to have a deep understanding of your target audience so that your marketer can isolate their motivations. This information will give your digital marketing specialist exactly what they need to help you achieve your previously discussed goals. If you’re a small business, it is completely normal to not fully understand who your target is; this question is normal for the client and consultant to dive into together.
Are You Ready to Expand Your Digital Presence?
At Succeeding Small, we help spread awareness and get companies the visibility they deserve, and this is our first step. We want to make sure we have a clear understanding of everything our client’s small business embodies so we have no choice but to get it right. If you don’t have an answer to every single question, that is more than okay! By having a simple understanding of the value these answers hold, you’ll immediately be 6 steps ahead of anyone else getting ready to start the same process. If you need help expanding on your answers as you enter your digital marketing journey, contact us today!
