How Do I Scale My Business?

How Do I Scale My Business? 5 Marketing Questions To Make Your Business More Scalable

How do I scale my business? Unfortunately, there’s no one answer or plan that fits all businesses. But there is an overarching answer that may seem all too obvious: reach the customers you’re not currently reaching with the right marketing and the right budget.

So here’s the real deal. I would venture to say it’s not possible that you’ve run out of people to reach. And that’s great news because you’ve got more business to do. Here’s the hard part, you’ve got to find out what’s working, what’s not working and what channels you haven’t reached. It takes research and thought. Allow yourself the time to do this.

This process is different for every business. However, a good place to start is by digging into the following questions.

• Are you spending the full budget you have allocated for marketing? This is especially true of cost per click campaigns. It’s happened to everyone, even marketers, they set a budget for a campaign and the campaign doesn’t spend the full amount. This isn’t a cost savings. This is a missed opportunity. Here comes the hard work part, you need to deep dive into your campaigns. Look into everything within your campaigns from the ads (copy and design) to the bid process, to the landing page and finally the sales process. Examine the metrics and then ask yourself this question: Is there a problem in the design, campaign set up, funnel or target audience? Is there a place in the campaign your customers are falling out? If you don’t find a problem in the campaign, ask yourself:  Are you reaching your full potential and market with the audience? Where can you find audiences you haven’t tapped yet?
• Do you have the right marketing budget allocated? A general rule of thumb is your marketing budget should be set for the year around 8% of your total revenue. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, such as if you are getting your business off the ground and just starting. Now examine this, on that 8% marketing spend, are you growing and getting to your business goals? In rapid growth phases that number may need to come up. If you are spending that budget in the first two quarters and not hitting your goals, you need to evaluate your current marketing plan.
• How much should your customer cost? Or in more professional terms, what is your customer acquisition target? What is your current ROI? Just because you are spending marketing dollars and gaining customers, doesn’t mean you are profiting. If your average revenue from each customer is $40 and your overall marketing spend means that customer cost you $50 to obtain, you are not scaling or making money.

“If you build it they will come,” is not a real life theory to use in your business.

• How many times on average are you reaching a potential customer through marketing efforts? That line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come,” is not a real life theory to use in your business. Hard truth time: no matter how awesome your business is or how great your marketing looks, very rarely do people see something from a brand for the first time and make a purchase. You need to have multiple channels and touch points to get your brand in front of your customers. If your customers are getting one facebook ad on average, you probably are not reaching them enough. The old school marketing advice of the “rule of 7” still applies, meaning your customer needs to see or hear from your brand seven times before making a purchase move. The good news is, in todays digital evolution, those seven touch points can happen much quicker. The downside of digital is we are flooded with channel noise. Your brand needs to be reiterated to customers and at the same time needs to feel authentic and organic. Think about how many times and where your potential customers are being reached.
• Are you thinking about the whole marketing and sales funnel? Truth be told, marketing and sales teams haven’t always gotten along. And they still blame each other from time-to-time. Here’s the truth, they cannot be siloed and still grow your business. Marketers have come along way with our sales friends because marketing has changed to see a customer through the entire process, from first touch to sale. Advancements in digital efforts and automation have allowed us the tools to do so. We can now hold our customers hand and guide them through the entire process until they become sale. If you are not considering the whole process in your marketing efforts, you may be leaving customers on the table because you are missing important touch points.

So now that you’ve identified a few issues, what’s next in answering “How Do I Scale My Business?” Simply put, take that knowledge you’ve just gained and start building a better marketing plan. Marketing pro secret: data and analytics are a marketers best friend, it allows us to make intelligent decisions and plans to hit goals. Marketers view even “fails” as an opportunity because even the fails give us data and analytics. If you don’t know where to start, don’t have the time or know it’s not your skill level; don’t be afraid to hire a marketing consultant.

Need marketing help, contact us at Monk Advertising. We’re about smarter marketing.