In Australia over 92% of businesses have an annual revenue (turnover) of less than 1 million dollars (source ASIC). This appears to be an amazing high number, but when you consider how many small businesses and shops there are in your local suburb it does make some sense.
I often wonder why business owners settle for low growth and I’m sure it’s because they don’t know about taking a simultaneous marketing approach.
Most businesses owners I have met with over the past 11 years often focus only on a few marketing media – say advertising in the newspaper, or paying for SEO for their website. The limitation I found is due to “what they can afford” rather than making each strategy deliver a ROI.
To give you an example – a business owner pays for a marketing company to advertise on Google for them. The marketing company delivers the clicks to the website and indeed the business owner gets a number of enquiries and sales.
Sure, the business owner is somewhat pleased. His marketing spend is producing sales. He sees his revenue increase and then adjusts his marketing budget to suit. In reality for most of the time the cost of the advertising higher than the gross profit on the sales he makes. In otherwords it’s a marketing campaign that is losing money.
(See this post about why most marketing does not deliver a healthy ROI and what to do about it)
This “reality” is the single important reason why business owners limit their marketing budget and the growth of their business.
To succeed requires:
1) A ROI on all marketing strategies and channel – the most difficult challenge.
2) Scaling to maximise the number of enquiries from a particular media.
3) Simultaneous marketing – utilising multiple media to further increase enquiries and sales.
This IS the formula to break through the million dollar ceiling that most Australian businesses find such a barrier.