How to Sell Marketing Services to Small Businesses

1. Maximizers invest more time on sales and marketing than other types, with 61 percent spending over $1,000 per month. They have the most diverse platform reach, with 49 percent using Facebook, 36 percent using Twitter and 31 percent using YouTube. However, 60 percent said they need help building marketing tools and 61% said they need assistance in evaluating effective marketing content.
2. Strivers look for help overcoming their sales and marketing challenges, moving beyond their existing capabilities and supporting the growth of their businesses. The problem is that they often lack the time and resources to fully use their technology and end up dissatisfied with it.
   
3. Supporters want to reduce costs and save time, with 57 percent of this group spending less than $1,000 per month on marketing and 34 percent spending between $0 and $500 per month. This group prefers Facebook for social media marketing (60 percent) and Twitter comes in second place at 31 percent.
4. Customizers want to automate existing sales processes and scale their businesses without sacrificing their ability to deliver personalized customer service. They use Facebook and Twitter to market and leverage LinkedIn for networking. More than half said they need help developing effective marketing strategies and evaluating messaging, and 53 percent said they need help in selecting the right sales and marketing tools. Slightly more than half spend more than $1,000 per month on marketing.

Most of all, the survey shows that small businesses need better education and feel somewhat lost when it comes to finding the right solution for their specific needs. With that in mind, here are some tips on how to sell to small business owners and CEOs.

• Talk about the here and now. Small business owners don’t necessarily have three- and five-year plans, so they don’t respond well to long-term ROI messages or claims about value received over time. They are mostly looking to solve an immediate problem. Your value timeline should align with the resources of your small business customers.

Vistaprint is a company that reinforces the advice to meeting current needs of owners. In an interview, Vistaprint CEO Robert Keane explained there are about 50 million businesses with less than ten employees in North America and Europe. Among those, about 90 percent are less than two employees and 80 percent are one-person enterprises. This means there are 40 million home-based or single-person firms. According to Mr. Keane, “The rise of digital and electronic means of communication has been huge, and I’m talking specifically about websites, email marketing and local search. Websites have taken over for brochures, email marketing has ousted postcard mailings and local search has taken over Yellow Pages. We realize that the way small business marketing happens is not what it used to be. Today we are really a company that does all things marketing for micro businesses.”