Marketing has always been an important part of running a business – contrary to the popular saying, products and services don’t really sell themselves. In recent years however, marketing has been elevated to becoming indispensable for all commercial endeavors, from small family-owned stores, to multi-national corporations. Without market visibility, a business is all but destined for failure. Ever-inflating marketing budgets are a clear indication that you either promote yourself, or risk getting left by the wayside.

How does this impact professional organization companies? At first glance, it seems to spell certain doom. It’s hard enough to get such a business off the ground as it is, and adding marketing into the mix seems to complicate the process even further. Fortunately, the situation is not as grim as it appears. Marketing your professional organization business certainly has its fair share of challenges, but there are means of tackling them with a modicum of effort and creativity. In the rest of this article, we will explore some of these challenges, and give a few hints on how to solve them more efficiently.

Lack of Money, Time and Staff

Challenge: Possibly the biggest challenge professional organizers face when it comes to marketing, is a lack of adequate resources. First, there is the issue of finance. Advertising can be a significant drain of company funds, especially if a company requires a big clientele for its business model to function. Second, the issue of time. Creating and presenting promotional material requires time, and in rapidly evolving modern markets, time is the one thing you don’t have. Third, the issue of staff. Marketing is best performed by an expert in the field, and small business often can’t afford to hire a dedicated marketing specialist.

Solution: Resources expenditure can be significantly reduced by proper research and planning. There are many marketing methods that don’t require much upfront investment, or can be scaled to fit even smaller budgets. Advertising can be made more time-efficient through the use of widely-available pre-built solutions. Instead of hiring marketing experts, it is possible to become one by taking online courses, which can often be found free of charge.

Neglecting Traditional Marketing

Challenge: The majority of sources online, unsurprisingly, advocate online promotion as the be-all end-all of marketing. While online marketing has seen a veritable explosion in popularity in recent years, many traditional forms of marketing still remain effective today. Not making use of them is a huge missed opportunity, as they can often give a business the edge over competitors that stick solely to online methods. A significant portion of the populace still follows traditional media, while not being too keen on browsing online, making them ideal targets for “analog” marketing tactics.

Solution: Incorporate traditional marketing approaches into your overall marketing strategy. TV and radio ads on local stations are a great way to reach to customers in your local area. Business card printing, custom sticker printing, creating flyers, brochures or coupons, etc. are all cheap and effective ways of spreading word about your business on the street. Anything you can put your logo and company info on can be turned into promotional material at very little extra cost. Since they often deal with clients in person, professional organizers have ample opportunity to distribute such material while they work.

Audience Mistargeting

Challenge: A company can do everything right when it comes to creating and dispersing promotional material, but it can still end up with nothing to show for its efforts. The most common reason for why this happens is due to a misunderstanding of who your audience is. Professional organization is a wide field, and there are many potential audiences to consider. It is not enough have a well thought-out marketing campaign – it also has to be aimed at just the right people. Small business often miscalculate when determining who the ideal target audience, leaving them stranded with a product or service no one seems to want or need.

Solution: There is only one surefire way to make sure your marketing campaign will have an impact – conduct comprehensive market research. This process can be broken down into several smaller ones. First, a survey of opinion has to be performed in some fashion, in order to determine how people feel about a given product or service. Giving demonstrations of your services for free, and soliciting opinions from clients is one way professional organizers can approach this problem. Second, the marketplace must be analyzed to find out whether there are competitors offering something similar, and at what cost. An easy way to do this is to hire one of your competitors to see how they operate first hand. Finally, an estimate has to be made regarding the size of the audience which would suffice to make the venture profitable. Professional organizers need to explore multiple revenue models, including per-service, per-hour, monthly subscriptions, etc.

Conclusion

Tackling major challenges such as these should be the first priority of professional organizers looking to get ahead in the marketing game. There are many smaller issues that will inevitably crop up along the way as well, but tackling them shouldn’t present much difficulty once you have the basics down. Marketing is a chaotic field to move through even at the best of times, but it can be accomplished if you know what to expect before hand, and take adequate preparations.

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