Business Industry Overview

Established in 1953, the SBA (Small Business Administration) reported in 2019 that 30.2 million small businesses are operating in this country, which comprise a massive 99.9% of all United States businesses. The SBA defines a small business as a firm with fewer than 500 employees. The majority of small business owners considered a lack of capital or cash flow one of their major challenges, followed closely by trouble with marketing and advertising. 

Small Business Failure Rate

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” (Benjamin Franklin). Careful, methodical, strategic planning -- and hard work – favor the success of any major event. The same can be said of most business accomplishments.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, 30% of small business fail in their second year, and 50% of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70% of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.

It’s critical for all businesses to have a business plan. It must be realistic, based on accurate, current information and educated projections for the future. Components should include:

·       Description of the business, vision, goals, and keys to success

·       Financial: capital equipment and supply list, balance sheet, income statement, cash flow analysis, sales and expense forecast

·       Market analysis

·       Marketing, advertising, and promotional activities

·       Analysis of competition

·       Potential problems and solutions

·       Budgeting and managing company growths

Whether you have a business plan or not, our services identify many essential elements needed to grow your business that are included within a strong business plan.

Business Owners Need Help

Various studies show SMBs lack the time and knowledge to manage digital media effectively. Many small business owners acknowledge their shortcomings with more than 70% stating they wish they could take advantage of digital media to help expand their businesses and reach new customers. Most small business owners believe current marketing providers don’t have their best interest in mind. Owners often feel marketing providers push “flavor of the month” products on them and don’t bother to learn what they actually need.

300% - 500% Return on Investment

URWA Consulting has been providing digital marketing consulting services to hundreds of SMB clients since our inception in 2011. The success of our firm is directly attributed to our unique business model which enables us to work with businesses to identify, develop strategies and measure KPI’s (key performance indicators) that drive business growth goals and increase the probability of long-term success. Clients implementing our recommendations experience between 300% to 500% returns on investments.

Give us a call to schedule your complimentary consultation.

Maximizing Business Revenue from Every Marketing Dollar

By Warren Kolber

Are you generating new, repeat, and referral business from your marketing in a profitable way? That’s the question you need to ask yourself.

The ability to measure, communicate, and grow the contribution of marketing investments is a critical factor in your business success. With so many potential customers using the Internet to research, locate, educate, compare, and check everything from reviews to prices to products to location, the businesses that master digital marketing often find themselves with an advantage over their competitors. If you invest a $1 in a marketing activity do you know approximately how much to expect in return?  

Most marketing experts suggest that generating $5 in revenue for every $1 in cost is a good target; more on this later in the article. Once you know your target you can begin managing your business based on performance, customer, and financial data. The single most important task that you must accomplish to earn the highest returns on every dollar that you invest is to learn as much as possible about your ideal customer types. 

You need this information to be able to map their wants, needs, and behaviors throughout their entire buying journey. The type of information that you’re looking for includes; why they wanted or needed the product or service, how they began their search, what was important to them in making their decisions during their buying journey, how long did the entire buying cycle take, etc.  The best and least expensive way to do this is by connecting with your past customers. 

Also, very high on the list if you want to generate high returns on your marketing is building your email marketing list. On average, Email marketing generates $44 for every $1 spent. Even more important, research shows that email is consumers preferred channel for promotions, with almost one-third listing email as their top choice.

Today, most consumers start their search for a business, product, or service online. Many consumers use online research in place of the traditional buying cycle. In fact, 81% of people go online before visiting a store. For major purchases, people may spend as much as two to three months online. In many cases, by the time a customer contacts a salesperson, their deep into their buying journey. To ensure that consumers have a great experience you need to make it quick and easy for them to access whatever they want on your website. This means moving the content about you and your business to secondary pages so your website home page and its primary navigation can focus on helping people access what they want.  

Don’t forget that many people now go online using their mobile device. To give you a better idea of the power of mobile search, Fifty-five percent of mobile searches resulted in a conversion within one hour.  Your website needs to automatically detect what device someone is using and automatically create a mobile friendly version of your website in less than one second. The good news is that this is easy to do, and it should be included in most modern websites. 

Third person opinions about your business are more important than what you say. Investing a very small amount to generate new reviews, and implementing a system to uncover negative customer experiences before they’re posted online is a very low cost way not only to increase the conversion of website visitors to leads and customers, it also is very valuable in Google search rankings or search engine optimization (SEO).

At an absolute minimum, you need to cover your costs of any marketing campaign. Your costs include whatever you invest in the media you use, producing ads and content, fees you pay to others, and your cost of acquiring the product you sell. If you only generate twice the revenue as the cost of the actual marketing, it’s possible that your production and other costs would eat up any profit that you would have made. 

You do want to consider the Lifetime Value of each new customer when you calculate your return on any marketing investment. To do this you have to calculate all the revenue that customer will generate over their entire lifetime as a customer, and this should include any revenue generated by your business from new clients that a customer refers to your business.

  

There are numerous tools that you can use for very low cost to help you collect the data that you’ll need to make these calculations. Our top choice for small businesses is Marketo and Hubspot, and for larger businesses Pardot.      

I started this article by mentioning the importance of performance data. We see way too many expensive marketing agencies and experts design programs that do not generate the performance data that is needed for a business owner to evaluate and refine the programs they implement. URWAConsulting strongly recommends that you find a firm or professional who will help you deign marketing programs based on your ideal customer’s buying journey and measure everything.

We provide a FreeMarketing Analysis for businesses interested in learning how they can generate better returns on their marketing investments. We’re also happy to schedule one freeconsultation if you would like to speak with one of our Managing Partners; warren@urwaconsulting.com, or (303) 562-4744.

Remember, if you can’t measure it, you shouldn’t invest your money in it. 

URWA Consulting welcomes Seaman Family Dentistry of Lenexa, KS. as a new client. In this engagement we will be working with the client to increase their website leads and appointments, and align their digital marketing with their goal to expand their practice. URWA Consulting; 303 223-4988.

Solving the Biggest Digital Marketing Challenge; Generating High Returns

Organizations that are not generating returns from their digital or online marketing need to evaluate if their marketing and advertising investments are aligned with their organization or business goals.

Click here to learn the 6 Steps to Align Your Marketing with your Organization’s Goals  

When marketing efforts are linked to their impact on strategic business goals organizations can measure and optimize the outcomes that drive success. At that point, each dollar spent on marketing and advertising can be reallocated into the mix of marketing programs that generates the best results.  

When spending on marketing and advertising is aligned with the organization’s goals it will have a direct impact on the businesses success.

While TV, radio, and some traditional media sources remain important tools to reach consumers, the web has become the primary reference for consumers and businesses executives to investigate organizations, products, services, and people. Search engines, websites, chat rooms, directories, social media, and review sites are the tools most often used by consumers to learn about and communicate the companies, organizations, and people that they care about.

We’ve all heard the phrase “half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is that I don’t know which half.” Today, any business can use their own data to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Click here for free access to Generating the Right Leads: 100% of the Time

The Challenges

One of the biggest challenges to linking marketing with strategic goals is that many people in an organization affect marketing success, and need to be focused on the same goals. Another challenge that businesses and organizations face is that most marketing companies are selling services that measure results in a manner that isn’t at all related to their client’s strategic business goals.

Still another issue is that many businesses and professional practices don’t have strategic goals. Yet, its well documented that any organization’s ability to effectively allocate its resources to impact its strategic business objectives drives its success.

Aligning your marketing with your business goals starts with your strategic marketing plan, continues by understanding your what your top customers want, and making it easy for them to find and get, and ends by measuring and optimizing how you engage, convert, and maximize the value of each customer.

Read 17 Successful Lead Generation Case Studies

URWA Consulting will take you through the entire process of aligning your marketing with your organization’s goals so you can attract, engage and converting active buyers into customers, clients, or patients. Tell us about your situation using out website LiveChat, completing our Contact form, calling (303) 223-4988, or sending an email to info@urwaconsulting.com

Welcome New Client and FREE Online Marketing Tools and Training for Business Owners

We want to welcome OK Plumbing & Heating as  new URWA Consulting client.

The new  Free Tools & Training section of our website helps business owners and digital marketers. It is an ever-changing part of the URWA Consulting website that is continuously update with new marketing content. Users have immediate access to free marketing tools, case studies of successful online marketing programs from a broad variety of businesses and organizations, and articles on do-it-yourself lead generation, medical practice marketing case studies, and more.  



Learn the right priorities, tools, and media to use to generate sales and revenue throughout the customer buying cycle

Customer Buying Cycle Infographic by URWA Consulting

Effective Marketing Influences Prospects Throughout Their Entire Buying Cycle 

How Successfull Practices Get New Patients

Successful new patient marketing 2015 Harris poll shows that patients want the following services from medical practices:

solves patient problems and makes it easy for them to get what they want. A

1. Online scheduling.
2. Email contact with doctor(s) for emergency questions.
3. Insurance coverage information.
4. The doctor’s time during appointments.
5. Online access to test results.
6. Telehealth visits.
7. Patient portals to retrieve and exchange information.
8. Medication, treatment, and appointment alerts via text.

Learn more about how to successfully attract, engage, and convert searchers into patients by reading this article from URWA Consulting. 

Marketing Challenge: Getting Potential Buyers to Know About You

     One way to ensure that your business is known is to advertise so much that everyone who might be a customer someday knows about your business. It's a completely different approach to identify your most likely buyers, understand their buying process, and earn their business by helping them get answers to their questions solve their problems, and meet their needs.

     The first approach can be effective. It is also expensive; often using mass media like radio, TV, direct mail, outdoor, print, and other media to cast a broad net. If you take the second approach, which we call customer buying cycle marketing, you can target you message and media to influence active buyers as they move through their own buying journey.  This method is less expensive, generates higher returns on your marketing dollars, and enables you to generate add-on sales based on your relationship and referrals.

     Digital media like email, the Internet and mobile phones have changed how buyers get information. Just take a look at the image below from Norton-Norris which compares the old and new buying cycles for students looking at colleges;

To have URWA Consulting identify your top customer types and map their buying cycles contact us at (303) 223-4988, email your questions to info@urwaconsulting.com, or immediately speak with a customer service representative through our  website LiveChat

URWA Consulting is a Denver, Colorado marketing firm that has represented more than 150 Front Range businesses and organizations, and helped them make the right decisions about their marketing.

URWA specializes in identifying any organizations best customer types, mapping their buying cycles, developing and implementing marketing programs that influence each customer type throughout their buying journey, negotiating discounts for services, finding expert vendors, managing marketing efforts, measuring results, and optimizing our client's marketing based on their needs and their marketing results.


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Stop Marketing - Start Helping

     For the first few years of our consulting firm (URWA Consulting) existence we sold digital marketing consulting services, and we weren't too bad at it. We quickly grew to more than 100 accounts within 18 months. Despite that growth, something was missing. More important, we were missing opportunities to help our clients because we were so busy trying to hire and manage people to support our growth that we forgot why we first started our Denver area marketing firm.

     Today, we find businesses that want help, and we figure out how to help them. We leverage our relationships with vendors and our more than 45 years combined marketing and advertising experience to negotiate discounts for our clients, screen their marketing calls and solicitations, build their marketing plans, and manage marketing and advertising projects from start to finish. This let's our clients focus on their business. Just ask, Jon Dishler at Dishler Laser Institute, or Diane at Omni-Pac, or Boulder bankruptcy and crinminal attorney Paul Stuber. It doesn't matter if they want online leads, if they don't like their website, if someone is trashing them on Yelp, if they want to sell a product online, or they just want to know how to get out of bad and ineffective marketing programs. If we (URWA Consulting) can't help solve their problems, we are not the right fit for the Denver and Colorado Front Range businesses people that we serve.

URWA Partner Program

URWA Consulting can now help print publishers develop a new, repeat revenue stream by helping their advertisers with their online marketing. Publishers simply identify advertisers who are struggling with their online marketing, At no cost to the advertiser, URWA Consulting will analyze their digital markting, and show them a step-by-step plan to accomplish their goals. Often, for a lower investment than they are currently making. Call us at (303) 223-4988 for additional information.

Businesses Need a Marketing Expert

There's no end to the list of online advertising companies, SEO firms, and website developers that want to sell online advertising to small business owners. What small business owners need are experts to ensure that their web presence supports their business or practice objectives for the lowest cost possible. All small business marketing should fall into one of the following buckets; attract prospects, engage prospects, convert prospects to leads & customers, measure outcomes, and optimize the business marketing. If that's not happening for you, call 303 223-4988 to discuss your situation, or go to URWA Consulting.

URWA welcomes the Silver Law Firm, Conscious Dental, Dry Creek Dental, and Homeguard Restoration as new clients.