Marketing as a small business is tough. You want to allot a part of your budget to expansion, and marketing is an effective way of doing that. At the same time, marketing can feel a bit more like a gamble than, say, adding a new item to your product line or hiring a new employee. The effects of marketing are more intangible – at least, if you’re not gathering data.
Getting Your Facts Straight
There are two broad categories of data-gathering: external and internal. There is data you can pay for, but for small businesses it’s not always worthwhile; we want easy wins and good ROI. Given that, let’s use some very basic, publicly available data about Saskatoon. The population of the Metro area is about 300,000 people, while the city itself has about 250,000. That means about 1/6th of your potential customer base lives in bedroom communities (assuming you’re selling locally, primarily).
Much of Saskatoon’s population growth is a result of immigration – though some migration occurs interprovincially, most of its growth is due to international immigration.
Now let’s look at some internal data-gathering methods: How do you gather demographic data? You can’t exactly ask front-end staff to write down descriptions of clients; almost all demographic data these days is gathered online. You’ll need some infrastructure in place – a website and social media presence are a good start. Rewards cards are another popular method of data-gathering, but creating that infrastructure can be a tall order for a small business, and online tools do similar work. Asking for your customer’s email after every transaction can be all you need.
While online accounts can give you some excellent data (your client’s age, postal code, how much they spend, and what they spend it on), you can get even better data using survey tools. Sites like SurveyMonkey can offer you surveys for free (or at a very low cost); you can create discount incentives if you want a lot of responses from clients.
Using Data to Drive Decisions
Starting with data-gathering gives you a twofold advantage: it helps you develop demographic (and psychographic) profiles of your customers, and it allows you to create a list of customer contacts. Customer profiles are incredibly useful – you’ll integrate data-gathering into your advertising (more on that later) so you can very carefully tweak how you advertise to which customers. Contact lists enable you to advertise directly to those customers through email blasts and traditional mail.
Data gathering before you begin marketing is essential for small businesses. Every dollar counts, and you don’t want to find out you’ve wasted money by targeting the wrong groups, creating ineffective ads, or advertising in the wrong places.
Online Marketing & SEO
There are several reasons why we advocate for a strong, focused, online marketing campaign for businesses in Saskatoon. First, online marketing and data-gathering can be integrated seamlessly with one another. Social media sites like Instagram will provide you with free analytics. The proper use of landing pages in conjunction with user accounts will give you a wealth of information about which ads are working on which customer profiles, and why.
The publicly available data on Saskatoon’s demographics are another important reason. When most of your population growth is occurring through immigration, it’s important to advertise using infrastructure that immigrants use. They might not be tuned into your favourite radio show or TV station, but they’ll definitely use Google to find services near them. Search engine optimization (SEO) works to boost your website to the top of various search engine results pages for commonly used keywords and phrases.
One of the most important elements of SEO is developing your online presence holistically – everything from your social media presence to online reviews can affect how well your site does on any given search engine. The nature of SEO as an evolving strategy mirrors Saskatoon’s rapid growth well – as demographics change, the strategies employed will adapt in real time.
Online marketing tends to cost a lot less than traditional marketing, too. Traditional advertising has the goal of reaching as many people as possible in a given area, with the hope being that some people who are interested in your product or service will be bound to see some of the advertising. Online marketing works on a much more heavily targeted, data-driven approach – clients who are already likely to want or are actively looking for your products or services will see your online presence. Targeting is efficient, and efficiency means better ROI for your small business. When your business gets bigger you can start influencing attitudes; for now, focus on influencing behaviours. First Rank specializes in Saskatoon SEO services and is only available for a certain number of clients. Call Today.
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