How to Find the Right Small Business Marketing Firm in Hoboken

City of Hoboken

Hoboken: Manhattan Neighborhood in New Jersey

Fun fact, it can actually be faster to get to midtown from Hoboken than the Upper East Side or Brooklyn. Unless you've spent time in Hoboken, it's hard to appreciate how this 1 square mile patch of land on Hudson River is closer to parts of Manhattan than the outer boroughs of Manhattan.

The gentrification of Hoboken in the late 20th century through the present resembled similar changes in Brooklyn, East Village, Chelsea, and Jersey City. All of which were once predominately run down, but transformed by an influx of young creative types. It soon became recognized as safe, exciting, and then desirable. Until now, it is a town filled with cool restaurants and luxury high-rises.

Hoboken faces many of the same marketing challenges of the other gentrified neighborhood. How to stand out and be trendy enough so people take notice.

Why Superior Web Design Matters in Hoboken?

With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in Hoboken is standing out and being noticed. You need a fast and mobile responsive site to do it. 

  1. A fast, intuitive, and responsive site help with differentiating and owning a small niche.
  2. Mobile is important to raise awareness regardless, but it more important in places like Hoboken where usage is high. Speed is key. If you take more than 1 or 2 seconds to load, that potential customer is gone.
  3. Being on mobile lets Hoboken and nearby Manhattan neighborhoods know you are nearby, open, and accessible, especially in the summer when local festivals add to the experience.

How to Evaluate Small Business Marketing Firms

Use the 6 Key Factors

6 Factors Great Small Business Marketing Agency

You Need to Know Where You Are Going Before Choosing How to Get There.

Strategy is a term that is misused often. A strategy is making a clear choice of between options. As a metaphor, I like to use a vacation as the example. The strategy is choosing where to go. The tactic is the means of transportation. Here, you need to evaluate if the agency you choose has a clear understand of where you are going and how it can deploy its tactics to help you win.

Your Marketing Needs to Deliver a Return

Sometimes marketing is an investment. Sometimes programs work. Sometimes, they fail. Regardless, you need a measurement plan in place to know which to kill and which to grow.

Testing is How You Learn

Learning is part of any marketing campaign. It is how you improve and grow. The market is constantly changing. You will be best suited to meet that change if you constantly testing.

Digital Marketing Knowhow is Fundamental

Digital marketing is a diverse field. One group specializes on web design and another on social. If you need a specialized agency for each, the costs add up quickly. Each have overheads they need to cover. This is where a full service agency can help. Those overheads are shared the different disciplines. Now, one caveat, it is important to know that the full service agency can provide the same if not better quality as the specialized.

Small Business Experience Can't be Beat

Large company solutions or carbon copies of other campaigns rarely work for small businesses. If you are seeking marketing help, make sure that the firm you chose has the experience in small business.

Risk Sharing

If a marketing firm will not share some of the risk with you, then they are not as vested in the outcome as you are.

Creativity Wins Points.

According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful. 

“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”

Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Kipps Bay interacting with your neighborhood can add value.

It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Hoboken or at your business location.

email marketing for small business call to action

Call to Action

Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.

We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Hoboken. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.

Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Hoboken has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.

Why Local Digital Marketing Matters in Hoboken?

With so much choice packed into such a small area, the key to success in Hoboken is standing out and being noticed. Local digital marketing can help you do just that. 

  1. Local digital marketing in Hoboken is about differentiating and owning a small niche. Then, exploring how you might expand from it.
  2. Digital is important to raise awareness among both Hoboken residents and those Manhattanites that are not too high and mighty to cross the river.. 
  3. It lets both Hoboken and nearby Manhattan neighborhoods know you are nearby, open, and accessible, especially in the summer when local festivals add to the experience.

Size Does Matter

I wish it were otherwise, but it is like a law of nature. The size of your account is directly proportional to the time the agency will spend on it. It is also proportional to the quality and experience of the talent that we are assigned to your business. Luckily, you can solve this problem by finding an agency where your business and budget matters to their bottom line. This is why smaller firms are preferable for smaller businesses.

Location is equally important. Most small businesses are local businesses, where the target audience is within a few blocks to mile radius from your location. Each place is unique. It has its own quirks. It takes someone who knows the area to understand those nuances. This is important because you want your ads to be perceived as authentic. Customers are easily turned off by cookie-cutter responses or creative.

Are They Willing to Share the Risk?

Marketing is not an exact science, where you say X and your target always does Y. This doesn't mean that marketing does not work or that it is a waste of time. It simply acknowledges the fact upfront that marketing contains some risk. It is true that there are best practices that can reduce this risk to optimize your return.

However, you never have complete information so sometimes even the best plans take time or need tweaking. This is why you should seek a partner who is upfront about the risk and is willing to share it with you. You also have to be willing to invest the time in following best practices. If you are dictating all the terms, then it is only reasonable that you accept that risk.

If you need help with marketing your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Things to Remember…

If you're thinking about finding help in Hoboken for your small business, here are some things to keep in mind.

  1. Find a firm that knows your area. If your small business is marketing in Hoboken, you'll want help from someone who understands how Hoboken works. The best marketing firms understand what makes Hoboken so special and can communicate to your clientele.
  2. Find a company you can trust. If you can't trust a business to have your best interests, you're already going to be left in the lurch. Make sure you have a guarantee that your business will be treated fairly by all parties.
  3. Get the size of help you need. A larger firm can provide more resources and can do more things. A smaller firm, on the other hand, can feel like a neighbor in Hoboken, with the added benefit of one-on-one help from the best the company can offer.

If you are interested in what more we do, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Hoboken. If you want the full state, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NJ.