Small Business Marketing Tips from FSB Magazine

Posted by Administrator on December 12th, 2007

In October, I sat down with Fortune Small Business magazine to share my small business marketing and contracting expertise. FSB contacted me, along with two other contracting experts, to give advice to growing remote-communications company Nomad Technologies. 60% of Nomad’s clients are government agencies, but company founders were facing a great deal of frustration with the procurement process. I saw several ways that Nomad could increase the effectiveness of their small business marketing efforts; today, I’d like to share that same advice with you.

Track Your Bids with a Customer Relationship Management System

When a small business is just getting off the ground, it may only be dealing with a few clients at a time. As the business grows, however, the customer-tracking methods that worked so well with a handful of clients may not be able to keep up with increased demand. In the last three years, Nomad’s staff had grown from 4 people to 23, and in 2006 they had sales of more than $3 million. This growth allowed them greater freedom to pursue opportunities, but it also meant that the Excel spreadsheet they’d been using to track customers was no longer meeting their needs. For a small business, marketing is key, so it’s doubly important to make sure customer relationships are being tracked efficiently. I suggested they upgrade to a customer relationship management system.

A Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) allows tracking of myriad factors such as bid status, award data, and key information on dealing with specific decision makers. Using a customer relationship management system such as GoldMine helps companies like Nomad plan their sales pipelines farther in advance and can also reveal hidden patterns and trends in agency purchasing behavior. As more information is added to the customer relationship management system, patterns will emerge to aid you in small business marketing – targeting the bids you have the best chance of winning, and discarding bids that historically haven’t gone to your type of company.

Forget the Trade Shows

In small business, marketing budgets are usually pretty tight. Industry trade shows can give a boost to branding efforts, but when it comes to actively marketing to government agencies, trade shows usually aren’t worth the expense. Like I told Fortune Small Business, there are 88,000 government agencies out there. For the cost of exhibiting at even one trade show, you could be focusing on marketing directly to government agencies.

Broaden Your Lead Sources

One of the most frustrating phenomena Nomad’s marketers were facing was the high rate of turnover at government agencies. Just when they felt they had established a rapport with a purchasing officer, he or she would be replaced and the relationship-building process would start all over again. I suggested they focus on the decision-makers, who are more likely to stay around. Nomad was also relying on lead sources such as FindRFP.com and FedBizOpps for lead notification, but the truth is that many times, lead sources such as these don’t publish opportunities in enough time for a strong marketing relationship to be built. For early notification, keep a close eye on newspaper stories about government meetings, or turn to a government contracting information company.

Finally, broadening lead sources means turning to new categories of clients. Diversify your lead sources: targeting companies in the private and educational sectors is a great way to keep from putting all your eggs in one basket. Don’t assume that there’s no market for your products or services outside of what you already pursue; brainstorming and thorough research can unlock a world of new lead sources.