Small and medium sized?businesses?with marketing agendas are now operating in the best and worst of times. SMB?s are benefitting from incredibly high consumer technology and social media adoption rates that combine with a new and expansive landscape of startup and renovated?marketing?solutions companies. ?Conversely, I sympathize with today?s small business operator, adept but usually overwhelmed by familiar?opportunities and challenges that fill their days and weeks, now having to differentiate between the scores of new digital marketing companies hawking their platforms, technologies, and solutions that will ?help? them get discovered or connected on the internet more easily and less expensively.
Trying to make the right decision can sometimes feel like walking through mud. ?To help, we can outline some big filters anyone can use that will rule in and out certain solutions and strategies. ?First, some context.
Last week BIA/Kelsey?s lead social media analyst released his first in a series of reports on the?characteristics and behaviors?of SMBs?operating a Facebook page. ?If you can accept Facebook marketing as a?bellwether?indicator, the data points to earlier stage and growth oriented companies as dominant adopters of new internet marketing technologies.
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Small growing companies are poised for more experimentation, but have lower tolerance levels and funding for mistakes that can derail or slow down progress and badly needed results. ?One of the most common overestimations SMBs make is how much time can be invested in these new technologies at the expense of other core business activities. ?Last week Evanne Schmarder published a telling post on 5 Social Media Marketing Myths?to underscore that ?It?s true that you can sign up and create a profile on popular platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Pinterest for free. However, a monetary value must be placed on the time spent to develop the platform and the creation and implementation of an online social media strategy?.A strong plan will include assigning responsibility, creating content, exploring productivity tools, monitoring your outreach, building relationships, putting in place and measuring key performance indicators, etc?takes time, and time is money.??
Getting help from outside digital marketing vendors has the built in ROI of time savings and expertise. ?So let?s talk about some easy decision filters that resource and revenue starved small or early stage businesses can use. ?Digital marketing companies tend to offer three kinds of solutions that make for easy filtering:
- Single product solutions providers?are sometimes a very good choice and could have the richest solution for any one strategy. For example, website development, cost per click campaigns, or email tools. ?The decision a business operator must make here is which strategy to pick and hope it?s the right one since all eggs will be in one basket. ?Alternatively, a business could choose to have multiple single service suppliers and platforms that they will need to invest time in learning, managing, and executing. ?It is critical to understand up front for any of these solutions providers how much of the business operator?s time is required in activating and managing the marketing tasks and if the supplier does any of the execution. ?Time is money, and expertise is required to succeed. ?Many businesses shy away from multiple vendor relationships wanting one fuller service company to work with.
- Saas (software as a service) platforms that provide multi functional dashboards to manage multiple internet marketing strategies like SEO, social listening, email deployment, social media management, measurement, reporting, blogging, etc. ?The advantage here is that the business operator has a place to more?efficiently?manage all of these activities instead of learning and logging into multiple platforms for each, but often will need to execute all the activity themselves. ?These software options tend to offer slightly lower monthly fees to the platform vendor, but require the highest levels of manpower hours. ?Remember, these are software platforms you are buying. ?It is like purchasing Microsoft Office or Quicken. ?Their value lies in their use and execution by the business operator. ?One of the most common misconceptions that SMBs have when they choose this path is that they are checking off lots of boxes and strategies, but quickly learn that all they have is a more?efficient?way to execute, investing 40 instead of 60 hours a month in digital marketing management.
- Turn-key single or multiple strategy supplier?solutions tend to have slightly higher monthly costs to the vendor, but can also reduce the time investment for the SMB by up to 90%. ?It is never advisable to think any solution, even these more full service ones, will be effective on complete vendor auto-pilot. But, the time savings from third party execution and expertise deployment can be highest here. ?These vendors will often manage social profiles, create web content, design websites, execute social campaigns, set up listening tools, extrapolate reporting, and provide active account management.
These three filters for digital marketing vendor selection can make the whole process more manageable. They should make sense to most business operators and help weed out certain investments based on time and ROI metrics. The trick is to be honest with yourself and to place a fair monetary value on time invested in digital marketing that could otherwise be applied to core business activities. ?The choices should become more straightforward and feel a whole lot less like walking through mud.
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