Small businesses typically start off by concentrating their efforts on operations. Once all the gremlins have been all ironed out, there is a little more room to expand their focus both in terms of capacity and possibly in terms of budget.

New Zealand small businesses are even more compact than the rest of the world: in the US, small businesses are establishments that employ less than 500 employees, while a kiwi small business counts less than 20 employees according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment

With well over 90% of businesses being considered small, and over 70% of them having no employees at all, implementing a successful marketing strategy is both a necessity and a challenge. We advocate adopting a CRM - and we recommend Salesforce while we are at it - from the very beginning to ensure consistency with your business operations, customer service, sales, and marketing.

With the right tools and processes you will be able to expand your lead and customer bases, securing the future of your enterprise and helping your business grow. All your efforts will help you learn how to best reach potential customers and promote your products and/or services.

This is our practical, step-by-step guide to help you setup and implement your Marketintg Strategy.

Step 1: Create your Strategy

Thinking of what you want to say and how you want to say it comes first. It can be overwhelming especially at the beginning. This small checklist can help you see you through the first steps. It's not designed to be all inclusive by any means, but it should allow you to hit the ground running and expand as you go.

• Make sure you have a nice and polished Mission and Vision. Make them short and sharp, make them memorable. Here's Salesforce's mission: 'We build bridges between companies and customers. Businesses succeed when they create meaningful connection. Our mission is to deliver it.'

• Do you have an Elevator Pitch? It's a 30-second description of what the company sells that's simple, engaging, and catchy. This is as important as your Mission and Vision, together they truly represent the core of your marketing communication. Go over to Trailhead to get some tips on practicing your pitch.

• Who are your customers? What is their pain? Find who your target audience is and offer your services and products as solutions to their problems.

• How much money are you willing to spend on marketing? Set a conservative number and stick to it. Review after 3 to 6 months depending on results and goals.

• Polish your branding. Do you have a logo and a colour palette? Stick to it! There are some great resources to help you create some designs (without needing to be a Photoshop guru), make sure you use them! It also helps to have a few templates with your logo and colours at the ready, for example an image template or stock images that align with the rest of your assets. Pexels is a good tool for free stock images, and BeFunky is a nice photo editor / graphic designer web tool with a very gentle learning curve.

Step 2: Create your Digital Presence

With dozens of tools available and plenty of integration options for your Salesforce org, it's easy for your budget to inflate exponentially. Before you even consider that, it's important to find out what you want to achieve: that will tell you what you need to be considering for your strategy execution.

Most guides (even the great ones!) will tell you to start identifying your marketing strengths and weaknesses and start from there. Do you have a well-nurtured email list? Focus on email marketing. Do you have plenty of followers on LinkedIn, Facebook, even TikTok for business? Then let's get going with social media campaigns! Alright, that's very true and you should definitely do that.

But what if I am starting from scratch and I have nothing? Glad you asked. Here's the first few steps that will help you make sense of the marketing maze, none of which will cost you a dime unless you want them to:

1. Get your website ducks in a row
   Digital marketing is, in the end, a complex and multi-faceted system that takes your prospects by hand and takes them to close a deal with you. Typically, that's done on your website, so before you go off sprinkling top dollars on anything else, make sure your website tells a clear story and the user experience is top notch.

2. Make sure you are using all the SEO tricks you can
   Do not underestimate the importance of good SEO. We even recommend you take a quick course on technical SEO (you do not need to be a developer!), it surely pays off and it sets you up with building good habits early on.

3. Look at your direct competition for social media presence, then set up your own presence
   Pay extra care to the ones who operate in your same area and have the same type of buyer persona (semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer) and see what they're up to. Chances are that if they're on Instagram and they're doing well, you should be on Instagram too!

4. Set up Google My Business
   In some circumstances you will only neeed to claim the business and fill all the details. It will help you manage your business presence across Google, including Search and Maps, and being free there is absolutely no reason not to do it. It's also handy to work seamlessly across other Google platforms such as AdWords, should you choose to do it at a later stage (and you should).

Step 3: Create your Editorial Calendar

This is really simple. If you have never had one don't worry, there is plenty of free templates you can use to create your very first one. Here is a very simple Editorial Calendar from Salesforce, available on their Pardot website.

The Editorial Calendar allows you to figure out what you want to talk about in a given year / quarter / month, and then write down exactly what you want to write, the format used and on what channels you want to distribute it.

Let us tell you loud and clear: this tool will become your best friend especially when you get busy and marketing slides down your priorities list. The thing about marketing is that it's an infinite game and dropping in and out will do more damage than not starting at all. With this in mind, you are ready to take the next step.

Step 4: Create Content

This is a long game, and also a no brainer. Content Marketing is the most effective way to grow your audience and generate new leads organically. It comes with a hefty opportunity cost though, so be aware of that: it might be free, but it can be time consuming especially when done right.

Here is a list of different types of content you will want to consider. You may pick some or slowly go through the whole list - keep in mind that some of them will require ongoing committments so choose wisely and start small (you can always add as you go):

• Blog articles

• Case studies

• E-books

• Infographics

• Videos

• Downloadable checklists

• Memes (you read right)

• Customer testimonials, interviews, reviews

• Whitepapers

• How-to guides and articles

• Webinars / Q&A sessions

• Podcasts

Step 5: Decide where to draw the line between doing it all, hiring a marketing specialist, or involve an agency

This, only you can know. You might find you or someone else in your team enjoys tackling these marketing tasks and it fits well with the rest of their duties, or you might find that you are just not interested in trying to juggle it all between the already existing and busy hands. Know when it's time to get external help and evaluate pros and cons for hiring in house or choose a consulting agency that can handle your workload more cost effectively.