“I need marketing,” you might be thinking when it comes to growing your small business. I hear this from almost all of my business clients when I first meet them. What they’re really saying is, “We need more leads and customers.”
The truth is, attracting new clients isn’t a job for marketing alone. It’s a team effort involving marketing, business development, and sales. However, these roles often blur together, especially in smaller businesses, leading to confusion about their distinct purposes and how they should work collaboratively to attract customers.
I’m going to try to help you define these roles and how they should work together to grow your small business, whether you’re a professional services firm or product-based business.
To make the most of these roles, you need to understand what each one contributes to your business.
Marketing is about getting attention.
It’s about creating awareness about your brand, generating leads, and creating interest in your products and services. It’s about creating visibility and attracting potential customers.
Some of the different activities that belong under marketing include:
Market research to identify new customers and understand existing audiences
Lead-generating website
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Email campaigns
Social media marketing
Public Relations
Events or webinars
Podcasts
Content marketing
Influencer marketing
Paid ads
Business development is about creating opportunities.
It focuses on building strategic relationships and identifying new ways to grow your business. Forming partnerships with complementary businesses that share a similar customer base but aren’t direct competitors can enhance visibility and customer growth, offering mutual benefits and shared marketing opportunities.
Business development is also about networking, nurturing leads, and setting up your sales team for success.
Sales is about closing deals.
It is the final step where qualified leads are turned into paying customers. It’s about relationship-building and customizing your products and services to meet your customers’ needs.
Outstanding customer service plays a crucial role in sales. Your sales team should be trained to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers, and you should have customer loyalty programs in place to reward repeat business. Happy customers are more likely to refer you to friends and family, and are a great source for new leads.
These roles shouldn’t be confused with one another because they have different purposes. But they are interconnected. The right mix of activities will depend on your industry, company size, and whether your business focuses on services or products.
You might be thinking, “Great, but I don’t have a budget for three, how do I know what specific tactics are absolutely necessary for my business to get new customers?”
In order to have a cost-effective combination of marketing, business development, and sales, there are 2 steps you must do regardless of your budget.
If you want to grow your business and attract new customers, you must know your ideal customer inside and out. Start by identifying your ideal existing customers; those you would want to have more of. You should know what makes them tick, why they choose you, what keeps them coming back, and what problems you solve for them. You should know their demographics: age, gender, income, education level. And you should know their psychographics: values, interests, lifestyle, and purchasing behavior.
The answers will define your potential customers that are most likely to be interested in your product or service.
Once you know your ideal target market, your business can target the right mix of marketing, business development, and sales activities to attract new customers. I’ll give you examples of the minimum configurations of marketing and business development activities for a law firm, retail store, and software company to generate new business in a minute.
If you want to keep and attract more customers, you need a strong online presence. At the very least, you need a lead generation website that is user-friendly with clear call-to-actions that seamlessly guides your potential customers through the sales process.
If you have an e-commerce business, you should make it easy for customers to checkout. You should minimize the steps it takes to complete a purchase, and make sure your product information is up-to-date and detailed.
On the other hand, if you have a service-oriented website, a well organized navigation, clear service descriptions and contact information is key.
As I discussed above, the right mix will depend on your target audience. So, basically try to get front of them where they are as cost-effectively as possible. But for illustration purposes, I’ll discuss two scenarios below.
If you have a small professional services firm, like a B2B law firm, business development is usually the more cost-effective way to grow your business compared to spending money on a comprehensive marketing strategy. But you should supplement your business outreach efforts with a few highly effective low-cost marketing activities.
For instance, at minimum here’s a list of activities you should consider.
Have a lead generation website for new customers to find you as a credible business.
Launch referral programs. Your best source for new business is usually your current customers, so make sure you’re strategically asking your best clients to refer new potential customers.
Collect and manage online reviews on your social media channels, review platforms, Google, and on your website.
Develop and promote customer loyalty programs.
Build your email lists from your business development activities.
Maintain a social media presence especially on LinkedIn if you serve businesses.
Share case studies to highlight your expertise and results.
Attend and network at industry events.
Build strategic partnerships with influencers who are from complementary businesses, such as accountants.
Use LinkedIn for prospecting.
Seek out speaking opportunities within your niche to showcase your expertise to many potential customers.
Secure exclusive partnerships with membership organizations where you can target their members.
Develop cross- and upselling strategies.
By combining targeted business development strategies with foundational marketing practices, small professional service businesses can create a cost-effective plan to win new clients.
If you have a small professional services firm, like a B2B law firm, business development is usually the more cost-effective way to grow your business compared to spending money on a comprehensive marketing strategy. But you should supplement your business outreach efforts with a few highly effective low-cost marketing activities.
For instance, at minimum here’s a list of activities you should consider.
By combining targeted business development strategies with foundational marketing practices, small professional service businesses can create a cost-effective plan to win new clients.
If you have a small product business, such as a bakery, marketing is more the way to go. You need to reach a lot of people, so you should be using digital marketing to your advantage.
Know and grow your customer base through partnerships, market research, and targeted strategies to attract new customers and keep the ones you have.
For instance, here are some activities you should do at least.
Even with limited budgets, this combination of marketing and outreach activities will help you consistently connect with your target audience and bring in new customers.
The above discussed go-to-market strategies are just some effective starting points for getting more customers. Always measure your ROI on all activities to assess if you should keep investing resources into your different activities. Keep doing what works, and when you have a bigger budget, add new types of marketing and business development efforts to your customer acquisition arsenal.
For instance, if you were light on digital marketing strategies, you could add search engine optimization optimization (SEO) to help your visitors find you easier in search results. You could also start blogging, or creating lots of valuable content to stay relevant and keep nurturing your prospects. Typically these activities are quite time-consuming, and can be costly for small businesses, but they are a must for growing companies.
The same goes for business development and sales. If it makes sense for your business, hire a dedicated business development and/or sales professional when you have more revenues instead of having you, the business owner, wear multiple hats – marketing, exploring new business, and selling. Focus on what you are good at, and hire the right talent for the job you need, which will help fuel your new customer acquisition and business growth.
Why do I say that? In my experience, business development is often done by salespeople in small organizations with limited budgets. In fact, if they can’t afford to have a marketing person either, the sales person will have to be doing some marketing as well.
It is not ideal to be spread so thin, because they are not going to be doing anything effectively enough for your to get new customers.
But being a business owner myself, I do understand when every penny counts, yet you have to start somewhere. So, I wrote this article with that in mind to help you start attracting new clients with some budget-friendly effective mix of strategies.
I am sure by now, you understand that finding the right mix of marketing, business development, and sales to grow your small business is both an art and a science. But, finding new clients doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right plan in place, growth is possible, no matter your business size.
President, Websites Ally
With over 12 years of experience in web design and 24+ years in digital marketing, Emilia is passionate about helping small and medium-sized businesses establish a strong online presence that drives business. With decades in lead generation, Emilia helps clients drive traffic to their website and increase their online visibility through email, social media, and various other types of content marketing. Her expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing strategies ensures that Websites Ally clients’ websites rank high on search engines and attract the right audience. Find her on LinkedIn.
