Fly Me To the Moon – Marketing for Small Business

Jean McIntyre

By  Jean McIntyre (Marketing Angels)

Jean Mc talks about how small businesses can learn a lot from NASA by clever use of resources.

I got the inspiration for writing this post from watching one of my all time favourite movies ‘Apollo 13’.

My favourite scene (well one of my favourites) is where they find out that the carbon dioxide filters are the wrong shape for the inlets and they have to build new ones or the astronauts will die.

They collect stuff they have on the ship – socks, flight plans and things and a guy walks into a room of engineers, throws it all on the table and says:  “We have to find a way to make this, fit into the hole for this, using nothing but these.”

Of course they achieve it.  Nasa engineers are very clever but it’s such a good metaphor for ingenuity – especially in business.

Be Like NASA

Marketing in small business is all about clever use of resources.

When we write a marketing plan – it’s a roadmap for how the business could use its resources.  It lays out what the opportunities are, what the costs are and the likely payoff from using those resources.  A marketing plan helps the business owner to make decisions about for what they will use their resources and what they expect to achieve with them.

If the US Government hadn’t decided to spend the money they would never have achieved their goal.  Now we live in a world where a man has walked on the moon.

Deciding on Resource Expenditure

The first thing a business needs to decide on is how much they want to spend on marketing.  That includes both money and time.

It’s true that marketing can take a huge chunk about of a business’ operating budget.  The really big companies think nothing of spending millions on their marketing campaigns because spending money on marketing works.

That said, marketing (particularly if you advertise) can suck up all of your spare money if you aren’t clever about it.  You need to decide what is a reasonable amount of resources to spend to achieve the kind of return you want.  Marketing Angels has a very good e-guide about this subject that’s downloadable for free called “How Much Should I Spend on Marketing“.

Once you know what you want to spend – then you need to decide what to spend it on.

Hint:  Startups need to spend a much higher proportion of their budget on marketing than existing businesses.

What to take with you to the moon

There are literally 1,001 different ways you can market your business (I have a book with exactly that title!).  So what to choose.

I’ve talked in detail in previous posts about the different forms of marketing and when to use them. To make decisions on this you really need to understand your market inside and out.

Knowing your market (from research) will tell you: what magazines and newspapers they read, what channels they watch and listen to how they use the internet and what websites they frequent.  Research can tell you what organisations they belong to, how they shop and how much they spend.

All this informs the kind of marketing you will choose to spend your resources on.  It can drive your advertising, your publicity, your networking, your sponsorship, your events.

Most importantly it determines exactly what you will say to your market in your advertising – your key messages – so that what you say encourages potential customers to buy from you.

The NASA engineers know their ship, the astronauts, the journey and the destination inside out – so they’ve got a lot to work with to decide what resources to use and when and where.

Decide then DO IT

Probably the most important issue around using resources to market you business is to have faith and just decide to do it.  You know it will cost you time and money to succeed and committing those resources to marketing is perhaps the hardest leap to make in business.

In helping you with making that leap – I’m hoping you might find inspiration from President John F Kennedy when he announced that America was going to land a man on the moon.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on resource expenditure for marketing.

Jean Mc