The Mystery of Marketing

Navigating the deep, murky waters of marketing can be intimidating for small business owners because the majority of them don’t know where to start. Coming up with a winning marketing method/formula is difficult. And help, in the context of a Marketing Agency, can be expensive. The reality is that most small business owners can’t afford to hire a marketing agency. So how do you get the attention of potential customers?

Marketing pundit Seth Godin, advocates the merits of being “remarkable”, i.e. being unique enough to be able to get noticed through the “noise” (noise being what all the other businesses are doing to vie for attention). It reminds me of the cliché stockbroker scene where the brokers are all running around trying to out scream each other: literal pandemonium. It is little wonder that the average consumer just wants to shut out the noise.

The possibility of a marketing “home run” is possible but it seems like winning the lottery versus good management (which I suppose is always true of the truly accomplished; they make the difficult look magically easy). There is also the ongoing threat from the competition – in their attempt to get noticed, they will try for “bigger and better”; endlessly tweaking their marketing strategies in the attempt to optimize their competitive edge. So what’s a small business owner to do?

Here are my observations concerning marketing and small business owners:

Unpopular:

1. Newspaper advertising – There is a minority of small business owners who do this regularly; most often they’re food franchises. I believe the rationale is that you can’t let yourself (i.e. your company) get left behind given that everyone else is doing it. There’s generally nothing “remarkable” or “unique” about it except maybe the sheer repetition of your message to the market. The general consensus from most small business owners is that newspaper advertising doesn’t pay back. This perspective is short term but that’s all some businesses can afford to consider.

2. The Yellow Pages – Most business owners will tell you it’s not worth the cost. For the few that I found still advertising in it, most were “in trouble”. Is there a connection? Maybe; I run across a lot of businesses that are in trouble. Given the numbers that “fail” maybe it’s no surprise.

3. Video – I met a business owner that said he spent $ 70,000 in a year on advertising using video at a local venue. It focused on his target market and he confidently asserted that it paid back. Most people won’t consider it. (Pundits say web video is on the rise in terms of importance.) Unfortunately, most business owners feel they can’t afford “professionally” done video and most of them are right. I don’t think a bad web video helps anyone and I’ve seen some pretty bad web videos. Why would anyone include mute people standing there unmoving, looking stiff, unnatural and uncomfortable???? I don’t believe that helps anyone’s credibility.

Most Common:

1. Word of Mouth (WOM) – I’ve only run across one small business owner who didn’t credit his success to ”word of mouth” which is really about the ability to develop and spread relationships. It’s a marketing strategy that is typically slow to yield results but is almost always effective. I suspect those that excel at customer service find it the most rewarding in terms of results. However, I also suspect it can be limiting/restricting because there’s little impetus to explore what works better. The question is: are you reaching your potential? My opinion is most companies aren’t.

2. Location, Location, Location – My observation is the importance of location correlates inversely with the amount of differentiation. It is most important for retailers who sell commodities where there’s little to no differentiation. It’s somewhat less important for businesses driven by referral (WOM) such as health providers, Spa’s, Salons, Lawyers, and Accountants. Although with these businesses, location can be a method of differentiation. I know a business that’s located close a Go Station where most of their clients are commuters. It’s very high traffic and IMHO, a very smart location choice. The primary benefit in this case is increased traffic but there can be other considerations: proximity to suppliers and/or customers to save on travel and shipping/delivery costs. Logistical efficiency can be important, but it’s more important to attract sales and high traffic is a great way to do it. For specialty businesses such as an artist, location is less important (because their product offering is highly differentiated) and the same can be said for manufacturers who have a limited customer base. The more unique the offering, the further people will go to obtain it. Location is also important for on-line businesses but the context is different. The challenge is not their physical but “on-line” location, and they also have the issue of getting noticed through the “noise”. It is common knowledge that the virtual world is gaining in importance and that it is important to be represented in that context. The problem is that it can be a literal quagmire of options; many of which aren’t well understood. As an example, most businesses are intimidated by security and well they should be. I don’t know of an IT person who isn’t concerned about security (to the extent that they opt out of online social media) which is pretty compelling evidence that the rest of us should be concerned too. Unfortunately, I believe this is one of those things where being a late adapter can be dangerous/harmful but the challenge is in knowing how to make it work effectively and safely. There are lots of companies that feel spending money on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a waste of time. And I’d agree for those that are still getting lost in the noise regardless of their SEO investment. The challenge, as always, is how to get noticed but just because someone doesn’t know how to do it doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity.

Differentiation – The most frequent response I hear to the question of: “How do you differentiate?” is customer service and speed. The problem is that almost every company claims superiour service and speed. I have no doubt of its critical importance given the poor survival rate of those who don’t do it well but believe doing it well is a prerequisite and thus rarely a true differentiator. A problematic question for most businesses is: How do you uniquely answer your customer’s needs or what is your unique value proposition or Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? Most business owner’s have a hard time answering this question but the sooner and the better they can answer it, the sooner and better they can leverage it. And magic can happen if a company understands it well enough that they can effectively measure customer response to their USP.

Think of it this way: do you want a customer to have to find you in a “crowd” (also defined as “noise”) or would you prefer to stand out so that it is easier to find you?

The Opportunity

Marketing is a very big subject and blogs are small but the one thing most people will agree on is that sales are about relationships. Does marketing include sales? Most would say it does. So why not keep it in perspective? If it helps sales, then it’s worthy of your attention. And if you don’t know exactly how much something impacts sales then: find a way to measure it. What doesn’t make the cut is noise and we could all do with a lot less noise.