Hit & Miss Advertising

A friend of mine owns a coffee shop. Well actually several friends of mine own coffee shops. But there is one in particular that I'm thinking of because we have had several discussions over the years about his marketing.

I've watched him grow and triple in size. But what I care about most with him and his chain of coffee shops is the consistency of his branding.

One thing he does is have a recognizable sign. The Logo. But here's what varies from location to location:

Some stores have drive up service. Some stores don't. Some stores are only drive up.

Some stores are stand alone. Some stores are located in a gas station. Some are in a book store. How do you know you are in (or at) one of their stores if there are all of these variables? And how do you market?

Well, one thing he has going for him is they roast all their beans. (Most customers don't care or know the difference). He also has a couple of unique items on his coffee menu. And he has a website. He also has (usually) branded cups.

So, my struggle with him is a lack of long-term stick-to-it-ness in his advertising. There was a time when he did daily commercials on the radio, but he has not stuck with a radio station for a full year in this manner.

The folks at Small Fuel wrote about this subject and I'll share the following article with my friend. But first, let me share it with you:

One of the hardest parts about marketing a small business is doing it consistently. There are always slow periods, busy periods, growth periods, and times when you probably just don’t feel like marketing.

Being consistent, though, is pretty important. There’s a certain amount of consistency you need to build up relationships and convince people to be interested in your company. Not to mention, when you stop marketing you won’t get nearly as much business.

So how do you keep yourself consistent? Read more for a few consistency tricks that work well for me.

Passive Marketing

It’s important to note that not all marketing is constant work—some types will help you market your small business and barely require you do do anything after they are started. I call this type of marketing “passive marketing”, which basically means that once you get it going it can run on its own for a while.

Some examples of passive marketing include yellow page ads, some print ads, pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization, etc… A lot of these methods still require work and usually periodic reviews, but it’s generally a lot less than an active method like cold calling.

At SmallFuel, we’ve set up our marketing so that about half of it is passive. Things like the website (not counting the blog) and pay-per-click campaigns can really save time and complement the more active marketing we do. At your company, you’ll want to experiment with your own ratio of active to passive marketing so you can determine what works best in your position.

Scheduling

One of the things I recommend most to small businesses is that they create a marketing schedule. Actually having the specific activities written down on a calendar can really make a difference in keeping track of what needs to be done when.

Also, a lot of marketing is repetitive—and having a schedule for certain activities makes habit-forming easier. Once you’ve got the habit, it’s a lot easier to be consistent.

Discipline

At the end of the day, in a small business at least, everything seems to come back to discipline. There are no amount of articles or gurus who can help you take care of business; that rests surely in your hands.

As a small business owner myself, I know how difficult it can be to maintain your freedom while still being productive and getting everything completed. With marketing, though, sometimes all it takes to make a campaign successful is a little bit of old-fashioned elbow grease.

Anyhow, those are some of the things that help me market consistently—but the question is: what works for you?

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