If you started your own business, you were probably faced with lots of “I could never do that” statements from friends and family. And they might be right!  

You’ve clearly proven you’re up for the test, so let’s dive into some marketing challenges you’re likely facing — and how to minimize them.

Lack of resources is the number one barrier for most small businesses to expand or even begin marketing. For all businesses, operations tend to take priority over marketing because the business needs to run!  

Let’s go over some of the ways this cycle hurts your bottom line and how you can start to break out of it.

Lack of marketing budget
Budget constraints are a problem in all areas for a small business. But the biggest mistake owners make is not earmarking some budget strictly for marketing. You’ll read tons of articles on how marketing in the social age is “free,” which makes entrepreneurs feel like they should be able to get tons of customers for the low, low price of $0.

Unfortunately, nothing in this life is free and especially not marketing. Even if you don’t plan on spending advertising dollars upfront, time is money, and marketing is time-consuming. Whether you’re doing the marketing yourself or pulling in someone to do it on top of their other responsibilities, someone has to spend less time on other areas of the business to make marketing happen. Make sure to budget for the time someone will be spending.

Small marketing teams
Even if you have a small  team who can wear a lot of hats, there are still only limited hours in a day. With the incredible number of marketing tactics in front of you on top of day-to-day business operations, trying to do it all with limited resources can leave business owners feeling frustrated with lackluster results.

Marketing isn’t very helpful when it’s treated as a side project, which means outsourcing certain tasks can be the missing piece to start turning brand awareness into sales. Make use of independent contractors and freelancers until you’re in a position to hire. These types of workers can be brought on temporarily or by project to help move things along.

Inconsistent or sporadic marketing efforts
Not having a dedicated marketing person can lead to inconsistent marketing. Teams jump on the chance when they have the time, but as soon as a different priority pops up, marketing has to take the back burner. For a business, this might not seem like a big issue, but for a customer, it’s a different story.

Consistency is part of building brand trust with customers. If prospects are receiving emails at unpredictable intervals, not seeing any new posts after following on social media, or never seeing the brand name pop up again, it will be hard for them to remember or trust you. To avoid this, try building out a promotional calendar ahead of time or start thinking about incorporating marketing automation to fill the gap when time is short.

Finding the right talent
Owners and staff at small companies wear a lot of hats. It’s not uncommon to find the back office manager also running the Facebook page or the customer service representative also running Instagram. While that might need to be the short-term fix, it won’t help the business grow. Think about it. If you run a bakery, you wouldn’t hire someone to help customers, package goods, AND be the head baker, right?

Tasking important marketing activities to people with little to no marketing experience will get you exactly those kinds of results. To grow, you will need to find marketing talent. But if you’re not a marketing expert, how are you supposed to know how to hire one? If you’re not hiring through a reputable freelancer hub, make sure to vet the online presence of any applicants and have a simple test they can do to showcase their skills.

Consistently seeing results
When there’s barely enough time in the day to squeeze in marketing at all, there’s definitely no time to report on and optimize those activities. Entrepreneurs too quickly give up on marketing because of a perceived lack of results.

However, it takes time, know-how, and set-up for most marketing strategies to show direct ROI. Many businesses struggle because they can’t tie marketing actions directly back to sales, and marketing ends up on the backburner yet again.

Investing in a marketing person or freelancer to assist with tracking and optimizing efforts so that you can see conversions is not only the best way to start getting results from the investment but is also a way to put your mind at ease that the marketing engine is running and customers are coming in.

Key takeaways
Small businesses may always have to struggle with resource constraints, but don’t forget that all big businesses started small at one point. If the goal is growth, then taking a long hard look at how you can invest in marketing is step one.

Some things to keep in mind:

• You can’t do it all yourself! Learning to outsource and leaning on trusted marketing specialists will help you see results a lot faster.

• As you grow, marketing becomes more complicated and a bigger time investment. Start hiring people who know how to show a return on it.

• Look into tools and technologies to help offload the need for more people. Marketing automation is helping lots of small businesses remove some manual tasks to free up time.

With a new mindset on marketing, you’ll be ready to start smashing those revenue goals!