During a discussion about small business marketing, one owner asked me “How do you get big?”  In other words, what did he need to do with his marketing to take his business to the next level.

Great question because the marketing you do to take your business from $0 to $100,000 is very different from the marketing you do to take your business to $250,000 or $1,000,000 or $5,000,000.

Let me illustrate with a story.

In the early 1970's shampoos and conditioners that smelled like lemon, strawberry, apple, herbs, and so on, became all the rage. As a teenager, I remember plunking down my hard-earned babysitting money to buy Love's Fresh Lemon shampoo so my hair would smell like fresh squeezed lemons. A small, Chicago-based company best known for a line of perm products used by hairdressers did something interesting. The company, Helene Curtis, created a line of shampoos and conditioners that copied the most popular fragrances but retailed for about half the price of the name brands. Then they ran very simple, inexpensive television commercials during daytime TV in which a deep, authoritative male voice would say something like: “Their shampoo smells lemon fresh; Suave shampoo smells lemon fresh. Their shampoo costs $2.50, Suave costs only $1.25. Suave does what theirs does for less.” It was a simple but brilliant strategy. It launched the billion dollar Suave brand which has since expanded into just about every personal care category including baby products, skin care, and a line of products for men.

It wasn't just the “Suave does what theirs does for less” campaign that made Suave a billion dollar brand. In the 1980's Helene Curtis made a decision to become a major player in the personal care market and staffed their consumer products division with key people from consumer product giants such as Quaker Oats, SC Johnson, and Proctor & Gamble. These individuals had the training, experience, and know-how to create major consumer brands.

Having worked in Helene Curtis' consumer products group for five years, I was actively involved in brand development and marketing. Here are some things I learned about marketing's role in growing a business.

Have an audacious vision

The mission at Helene Curtis was to become the premier provider of personal care products on a global scale. This represented an enormous shift for an organization known, primarily, for marketing a small line of permanent wave products to beauty shops.

How big and audacious is your vision for your company? I encourage you to create a vision that is big enough to make you a little nervous but exciting enough so that you want to stretch yourself in order to realize it.

Don't just meet your customers' needs

At the most basic level, people need shampoo to keep their hair clean. And at that level, just about any shampoo will do. Hence, branding. Brands address higher level needs such as self-esteem and social belonging. Even more important, brands reinforce the customer's sense of who they are…their self-identity. For example, people who buy brands like Suave, think of themselves as "smart consumers" because they're buying a product that is identical in quality to the "name brands" but paying less.

Think about your customers. How well do you really understand them? Do you know what problems drive them crazy? Do you know what they aspire to? Do you know what their vision and mission is? How do your products and services help your customers deal with problems or attain their goals? To achieve your growth objectives, help your customers or clients achieve theirs.

Develop partnerships and strategic alliances

My most eye-opening experience while working at Helene Curtis was learning that as important as the consumer was, the real customer, the customer upon whom the most resources, time, and manpower were spent was the retailer. Even fifteen years ago, most major consumer products companies were courting mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart as well as warehouse clubs.

Looking upstream and downstream at your supply chain, distributors, customers, and promoters, where are there opportunities to combine resources in ways in which the results are greater than the sum of your efforts? In particular, can you cross-sell one another's products, do joint promotions, combine media buys, and so on to increase your and your partner's marketing power?

Be willing to say good-bye to people, products, and activities that don't support your growth

The Suave brand has been around since the 1930's. It's signature product back then? Men's hairdressing. The hairdressing is long gone but the brand is thriving having evolved with the times. During my time at Helene Curtis, brand management was constantly scrutinizing product sales to identify poor performers which were discontinued and replaced with ones that better reflected consumer trends.

As mentioned earlier, when Helene Curtis made the decision to become a major player in the consumer market, they brought in new people, implemented new processes for investigating and introducing new products, and developed new relationships with retailers. Not everyone stayed during this expansion. Not all retailers continued to carry Helene Curtis brands. Products that had once been "stars" where discontinued, reformulated, or sold.

As you develop at your plans for 2006, assess your current marketing practices, relationships, and processes to determine which will support your growth objectives and which will not, and discontinue those that will not.

In conclusion…  

If you take away just one point, remember this: what you did to get today’s customers probably will not work with different or “bigger” customers, and what works for your customer today may not work for them tomorrow. You cannot grow your business by doing more of what you did to bring your business to this point. At some point your will have gotten as much return as possible on your marketing investment and it's time to move on.

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Once upon a time, not so long ago, a small but growing software company hired a marketing consultant to help them with their ecommerce business. The marketing consultant said to them, "If you give me $10,000" I will bring you all the customers you could ever wish for." So with high hopes, the company owner gave the consultant $10,000 and waited for the promised customers to come.

The consultant would visit and bring wise men and women along who would ask the business owner and his  employees lots of questions and to fill out many forms. Two months passed and the company received a long report filled with phrases such as adopter categories, paid inclusion, proactive CRM process, and so on. The company owner called the marketing consultant and asked, “Now what?” “Just follow our recommendation,” said the consultant.

Thinking he had somehow missed something important, the owner, his partner, and their part−time assistant read the report very carefully looking for all traces of the recommended plan of action. Still they found nothing they could use.

Again the business owner called the consultant. “The only recommendations we found were six bullet points on page 14 and one of those bullet points wasn't even a real sentence.”

“We have helped hundreds of businesses like yours become millionaires many times over,” replied the consultant. “If you need more support we would be more than happy to help with our six-month implementation plan.”

“What does that involved?” asked the owner.

“We use a dynamic and proactive CRM process that guarantees targeted eyeballs using multiple streaming channels and viral e-services, providing the best ROI on your investment”

“What's it cost?" asked the owner.

“$50,000.” answered the consultant.

“$10,000 was our marketing budget for the year.”

“Perhaps next year then,” said the marketing consultant.

Not surprisingly, the promised customers never did appear. The software company made it through the year. Barely. Needless to say, the owner is now extremely gun shy of hiring anyone to help with their marketing even though he readily admits he needs help.

This story, while extreme, is unfortunately more the rule than the exception. It is not that marketing support companies are hucksters who out to exchange a little jargon and magic dust for your hard-earned money. But good intentions and a toolkit of marketing tactics are often not enough for truly effective marketing.

The 5 most common reasons marketing support doesn't work are:

Reason 1: Vague steps for implementation.

Would you pay a golf pro $100 an hour if the advice you received was along the lines of “Just take the club and hit the ball as hard as you can.”? Yet it's not at all unusual to get advice like “Go to lots of networking events where you can meet prospective customers.” Unless you are one of the rare persons who is gifted with the skills and intuition for consistently turning casual meetings into customer relationships, trying to follow vague advice will leave you feeling inept and burned out.

Reason 2: Steps for implementation are way too big.

Even if specific, when steps are too large, we don't do them. For example, the goal “create three product descriptions for my web site” may seem pretty specific for many of you. Then why is it that there are so many unfinished websites out there? Because some of us need to take really small steps. Baby steps to make progress. A manageable step for some of us might be more like “list five things customers should know about my product.”

Reason 3: Taking a “one size fits all” approach.

Marketing and sales are the way you connect with and ultimately forge a relationship with your customers. If your message comes across as bland and impersonal—like something anyone in your industry could say—you aren't giving people a compelling reason to do business with you. You want a marketing support partner who “gets” your business and makes sure that your unique voice comes through loud and clear to your customers.

Reason 4: Mistaking tactics for marketing.

Creating a brochure is not marketing. Nor is a website, an advertisement, or a direct mail letter. These are all marketing TOOLS. They are methods—tactics, if you prefer—that you use to connect with prospective customers. Tactics need to work together to support your marketing strategy and objectives. You and your marketing support partner need to have a solid understanding of what your customers need, the unique solutions you offer, and the market in which you compete. Without this foundation you're basically taking shots in the dark.

Reason 5: Failing to set benchmarks and track progress.

In my book, marketing, especially small business marketing is about results. By results I mean more ideal customers, more referrals, a higher percentage of visitors who buy something from your website, etc. If you're not getting measurable results from your marketing, you are throwing away your money. You want to work with someone who insists that you develop and set measurable objectives by which you measure the effectiveness of your marketing.

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If you're like most folks who own a small business, you enjoy solving problems. Part of the reason you enjoy solving problems is because you're good at it.

In fact, if you have your own business, it's likely that you develop solutions that are often better than what others in your profession are offering. You may also think that the value added by offering superior solutions is so obvious to prospects that they will be eager to hire you.

Another reason, you probably enjoy solving problems is that it makes you look good. You solve a problem that is causing the other person a good deal of grief and you're a hero. You feel valued and appreciated. So it's understandable that opportunity to solve a prospect's problem is, to many business owners, what catnip is to cats—irresistible.

Tempting as it may be, however, you've got to stop jumping in and solving problems—at least until the time is right to do so.

A personal story:

Not too long ago, I was talking with a wiser, more experienced colleague about a meeting I had with a prospective client. I was very proud of myself because I had shared several clever solutions to the prospect's marketing problems. But instead of praising my brilliance and insight as I expected, my colleague said, "You've got to stop solving their problems."

This took me completely by surprise. Didn't my creative, savvy ideas add value? My colleague went on to explain where I went wrong and what to do instead.

Where we err is that we tend to jump in too soon with our solutions. We forget that taking a relationship from prospect to customer is a process and that we need to respect this process while at the same time, managing it.

So when is it right and appropriate to offer solutions? Here are some guidelines.

1. Ask questions until the answers become clear.

The most successful sales people ask lots of good questions. And they keep asking questions until they're about 80% certain they know what they can do to help the customer succeed.

At a minimum, you need to know: what's the problem (source and symptoms), what will it take to solve the problem, what you can do to solve the problem and what other resources will be needed, what are the results desired by your prospect, how will you know you've achieved those results, and what is the value to the organization of attaining those results.

It is only after you and your prospect have answered those questions together that you are ready to offer a solution.

Tip: If there is a solution you think would be perfect for the customer, try framing it as a question. For example, "Have you tried doing XYZ?" or "Are you familiar with XYZ?"

2. Within 1 - 2 complimentary consultations.

When it comes to sales and marketing, the number one issue small business owners raise is the amount of time they spend meeting with prospects. On the one hand, they don't want to come across like some of the more aggressive sales professionals who seem to eye prospective customers like pieces of meat and if it doesn't look like a sale is going to happen, they move on. But without standards, you risk turning meetings into informal visits where you share all sorts of valuable information that the other person appreciates but not enough to become a customer.

My rule of thumb is two complementary meetings: A 20-minute phone conversation to make sure there's a good fit and a longer, in-person meeting to ask questions, surface issues, and so on.
 
I don't mean to imply that this is a hard and fast rule. But as a business owner, your time and attention are the most precious assets you have. Be very conscious of the way you are spending those assets. The point is to meet until you have answered the questions mentioned in point #1.

3. When the customer is ready to invite you to make an offer.

My coach, Mark Silver, says that there is a point in the process, at which the client is ready to consider you as a business partner. The key word here is "consider." They aren't ready to sign on the dotted line or write a check but they see themselves doing business with you in some capacity. 

This point comes when you and the client come to an agreement on the problem, the desired results, and the value of the results. And when you are 80% clear on what you think it will take to help the customer attain the results they desire.

It is at this point when you ask a questions like, "How do you see us working together…?" and then allow the customer to let you know how they want to proceed. It only at this point that you can now begin suggesting solutions verbally and/or in the form of a proposal.

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A few weeks ago, I asked a group of small business owners "what are the marketing issues that you would most like some help with?" One issue that drew a lot of discussion was "How do I develop a marketing program that  (the small business owner) can implement within my time and budget constraints?"

Although the people I spoke with didn't use the word "program" (they used words like "process," "system," and "plan") What they were asking for was a way to select one or two marketing activities that they could do in a consistent, systematic way in order to attract more customers.

A number of the small business owners I spoke with had previously worked for large companies or organizations; organizations that had well-developed marketing planning processes and practices in place. It seems reasonable that a small business could use the practices and processes used by large organizations but scaled down to fit the resources available to a small company.

Forget it. If you're a solopreneur or own a very small business less than $500,000 annually), you do not own a "small, big company." You own a small business and the practices that work for a large business will not work for you: even scaled way down.

Instead, consider this for your marketing plan:

1. Pick one way to reach out to your customers and your prospective customers.

By "way" I mean a marketing activity such as: presenting to professional and service organizations, submitting articles to print and online magazines, writing a newsletter or ezine, creating a referral program, and so on. There are hundreds of activities you can employ. The trick is to choose ONE that you genuinely enjoy doing. If you don't enjoy the activity, this approach won't work.

2. Commit to mastering the one activity to which you have committed for a period of three to six months.

Mastering means not only that you have knowledge and skills but that you can adapt them to many different situations.

3. Commit to fully leveraging this activity to make the very most of very contact.

Ways to more fully leverage an activity can include:

• Put your contact information on the signature that goes out with your email. Include your tagline, slogan, or other short phrases that you want people to associate with you.

• If you send a periodic newsletter or ezine and include an article or promotion that requests action on the part of the reader (for example, "call me for more information") tell your reader how to get in touch. For example, "call me at 202-556-1800" or "send an email to moreinfo@cutyourcosts.com."

• Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. You'll stand out in the eyes of others by sending a hand-written thank-you note, emailing an article that might be of interest, sending a subscription invitation or an invitation to your next presentation.

4. Stick to it for three- to six-months.

Why 3 - 6 months? Because the effects of marketing are cumulative. It typically takes 7 or more impressions before a person feels safe enough to buy from a new business.

Step 4 can be incredibly challenging for entrepreneurs who are typically doing what they do because they like being able to quickly respond to opportunities. Still, 3-6 months isn't a very long time in the context of how we, as human beings, develop trusting relationships. Your investment in time and energy will more than pay off in the flow of customers that come as a result.

5. Create a system so that the activity becomes relatively automated.

Once you are clear with what works and what doesn't work, consider automating or outsourcing the activity. For example, broadcast services allow you to create auto-responders, periodic mailings, and manage subscriptions lists. You can write (or have someone else write) content and it will be sent automatically to your audience. Or outsource the activity by hiring a virtual assistant to schedule speaking engagements, handle follow-up, and maintain your website.

Once you've systematized an activity, you can add a new activity to your marketing plan. For example, once you have mastered networking events, you can put a customer referral program in place.

The point is to add activities slowly so that you're not overwhelmed by what to do when and that you can take advantage of the inevitable synergies that occur (in other words, your activities should enhance and reinforce each other — your website should support your speaking engagements and vice-versa).

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Contagious Marketing eZine™ is a monthly newsletter which provides tips, tools, and ideas to help the innovative small business owner make the most of their marketing dollar. To subscribe to Contagious Marketing and to receive a complementary copy of the workbook, "Where Does It Hurt?: How the language of Problems Attracts Customers to Your Solutions." Click here now .

Copyright (c)2006 Judy Murdoch, all rights reserved.