How Too Many Marketing Ideas can be Bad for Small Business

When it comes to marketing, ideas are a dime a dozen.  

It is easy to come up with ideas. There are so many options.  Often the result is too many ideas. 

Too many ideas to sort out how they all fit together and to know which ones to do.
For small businesses and organizations doing their own marketing, it often becomes too time consuming or overwhelming as there are too many ideas, too many platforms, and too many other things requiring the business owner's attention.  And usually too many ideas to implement with existing and fixed fiscal and human resources.  

When businesses are busy with their day-to-day activities, marketing becomes less important. This is how too many marketing ideas can lead to no marketing. Busy companies tend to stop promotion and advertising. However the marketplace is ever-changing and marketing needs to be considered in both slow and busy times. 

Websites are the new brochure, and social media is not a marketing plan

20 years ago, just before the internet took off, we used to call it the "brochure solution" because all our clients thought they needed a brochure to sell their product, program, or business service.

They often got a brochure, or a postcard, or a flyer, or a direct mail piece, but they also got guidance on how to design them, how to write them, what to do with them, when & how to distribute them, and how to support their investment with other marketing tools like news releases, events, advertising, speeches etc.  We could add a lot of value to that little brochure request.

Today, the website is the new brochure.
While everyone needs one, and they're worth investing in, they need a lot of support.  New products, programs, and business services need more support than "putting it out there on social media." Social media can help drive traffic to your website but there's so much more than that to do. Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest Google+ etc), isn't a marketing plan.  

When we develop marketing plans we consider strategies in public relations (including social media, text messaging, events, email etc), government relations, media relations, stakeholder relations, customer relations, staff relations, advertising (online, mobile, traditional etc), product and content development. When designed into an integrated marketing plan, these strategies can all help achieve your goals as well as drive traffic to your website.

So don't make the mistake of making a website and social media your only marketing solution.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.