The Investment

You Always Get Out What You Put In To Business

Having your own business sounds great! You can make you own schedule, you have employees, you are doing something that you’re passionate about and making money. A lot of people think about profits and titles and the exciting aspects without taking into account what goes into the backend.

As a marketing agency we talk a lot about what goes into the back end. Website build outs and email lists and social media management. To have a successful business in this day and age you have to have marketing and to have marketing (and good marketing at that to stand out), this takes time as well as money.

In the beginning months, you can do things yourself. You can create the Facebook and Instagram pages and take the pictures and get the brand out there. As things progress you have to start investing in the business to succeed.

One thing we see a lot of clients do is try and save and DIY their brand and compare it to larger more established brands and wonder 1. Why they are not going as good 2. If their product and business is good enough. Your business, brand and company are only as good as what you put in!

What Do You Want Long Term

Nike, Target, Whole Foods massive brands have massive marketing. They have photographers and brand strategists and marketing executives that thoughtfully create every image and piece of test we ever see come out of their company. One thing we have to evaluate with our clients is that what they are looking to do with their company?

For some people they are not looking to actively and aggressively scale their small business. That's completely fine! Some people have a 9-5 and just want a hobby on the side that they do seasonally or just on the weekends. We love seeing that! Having a creative outlet is always healthy and fun.

With that said you can evaluate the success of your business or compare the success of your business off of another company or business that is treating their business and scaling their business into a full time income. You need to assess what your business plan is for 5 years down the road. Do you want to make this a full time job? Do you want to be an entrepreneur with everything that comes with running a business, the good bad and the ugly?

Having this discussion with yourself and being honest with yourself will allow you to know what you need to invest into your business to get to where you want to be.

Go Big Or Go Home

Lets say you do make the decision that in 5 years you want this business to be a main source of income and you want to invest and scale it, what then? Just like anything else in life its a process. In our blog post Lets Take A Trip Down The Yellow Brick Road To Success we talk about funnels and what needs to come first and last in terms of building a profitable funnel for your business.

Starting from the very very beginning of business you need to get your brand and logo on point. From the beginning you need to have brand colors and styles that clients and customers associate with you. As a marketing agency we advise staying off Canva and DIY programs for your logo and investing in the graphic designer to craft a handmade logo to avoid having a generic logo design that many other brands may have as well.

From there invest in a photography shoot. Whether a product or service based business, investing in professional photos of your team. your craft, or your products, is always a good idea to place you a league ahead of the competition.

You Get What You Invest

If you made the decision that your business is going to be your full time gig and you want to scale invest in the big pieces and leave the DIY to the small pieces. Invest in good photography. Invest in social media management if that is not your forte. Invest in having a beautiful website built out. All of these elements are going to be the billboard of your business.

These pieces not only tell your clients and customers about the quality of your brand and company but also always them to trust the quality of your services or products. If you invest in the quality of your marketing, clients and customers will trust that you invested the same time and money into your products and services.