LOS ANGELES — When profits are down and money is tight, it’s tempting to cut out something that feels like an “expense” or a “nice-to-have option" in good times, and marketing often falls into this category. Shutting down or never starting marketing efforts, however, can keep a drycleaning business in crisis mode, with no new clients coming through the door or onto its routes.
Patty Ross shared some advice during her recent Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) webinar, “How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Small Business.” Ross is a social media expert, brand manager and business marketing advisor at Golden State Marketing here in Los Angeles.
The Importance of Planning
“Fifty percent of small businesses do not have a documented marketing plan,” Ross says, “but you’re 30% more likely to experience growth than those without a plan.”
Ross says that consistent planning is key to effective marketing and warns against what she calls the “Rubik’s Cube plan” of constantly twisting and adjusting as the company pivots to the “next big thing,” or the “spaghetti on the wall” approach of trying random tactics and seeing what sticks.
Even worse is what she terms “marketing spray and pray,” which she compares to shooting arrows randomly at a target and hoping something hits.
“All these efforts waste your time and money,” she says. “I know I don’t like to waste either one of those — especially time. You can always make more money. You can’t make more time.”
SWOT Tactics
Part of creating a marketing plan is to understand your business not just from behind your desk or on the plant floor but from an objective viewpoint. For this, Ross recommends doing a SWOT analysis.
“This gives you a view of your business at a glance,” she said, and helps an owner evaluate both the internal and external factors that affect the company and will come into play with any marketing decisions.
“I always recommend you want to start doing it as a startup,” Ross says. “Then, do it every six months or at least once a year — things change.”
The key components of a SWOT analysis, Ross says, are:
Strengths — “Things your company does well. What separates you from your competitors? What makes you better?”
Weaknesses — “What does your company lack? What are things your competitors might do better than you?”
Opportunities — “Maybe there’s an underserved market for your specific product or service. Maybe there are few competitors in your area.”
Threats — “This might include merging competitors, a changing regulatory environment or changing customer attitudes toward your product or service.”
Your Place in the Market
Another step Ross urges small-business owners to take when determining their marketing strategy is to develop their unique selling proposition, or USP. There are three factors to determining a company’s USP:
- What their brand does well
- What their competitor does well
- What the consumer wants
Where these factors overlap provides dry cleaners with important clues to their USP.
“The winning zone is what the consumers want and what you do well,” she says. “The losing zone is where your competitor performs this service better than you. There, you’ve already lost.”
When all the factors overlap, this is a risky place to be, because it then becomes a competitive battle. This can become expensive if a business doesn’t have a clear advantage.
“Find a way to stand out,” Ross urges.
She also warns against the “who cares” space: “It might be a product or service that you didn’t do the market research to see if it’s something that anybody wants. Are you solving any particular pain point or problem with it?”
Come back Tuesday for Part 2 of this series, where we’ll examine how to identify and understand your ideal customers through brand archetypes and buyer personas.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
