I wanted to start this blog with some profound quotes about the power of asking questions but a quick google has revealed these are not the mood I’m looking for, so I’ll have to make my own!

“The most important thing you can do in business is constantly ask yourself why.”

(Laura Hare, 2023, Great Thinker)

As you’ll hear me say time and time again, there are no hacks, no secrets, no absolute rules to growing a small business. In my experience the only people who use this language are Tik Tok stars who want lots of reel views. I don’t believe one size fits all for any business, so though I'll share today what I think are best practices, I want you to see them as guiding principles rather than firm rules.

In my humble opinion, the key to having a successful business is a laser focus on who you are, who your customers are and what they want, and communicating this clearly. The channels that you use, how good you are at social media, that comes later, you need to set up the foundations of your business first.

Principle #1. Ask yourself who you are and what makes you different and special?

This is one of the first things I want to know from a business… What is your brand? What do you want people to think when they interact with you? How do you want them to feel? 

It can be difficult to talk about yourself like this when you’re not paying a brand agency or marketing guru to do this! But everything comes from understanding who you are and how you want to be seen. 

People like to get swept up in stories that are authentic… What made you start your business? You want to elevate your brand from being transactional to something people care about, they become invested in your success. Once you’ve got this bit clear in your mind, everything else becomes easier, the proof in this strategy is that 81% of people are also likely to promote their favourite brands to friends and family. 

Principle #2. Who would be your ideal customer?

Once you know who you are, you want to think about who would shop with you? What sort of person are you targeting? 

I understand that you don’t want to go too narrow, that you want to capture a range of customers, but you won’t appeal to everyone. It can be really difficult when you believe in something so fervently, to accept that not everyone will like what you do… but trust that enough will. Understand where that customer hangs out. Where do they go for information? 

The customer is absolutely at the core of what you do so where-ever you are in your bus

#Principle 3. Map your customer journey

The best thing you can do to grow your business is always to get into the mind of your customer, think about what they would Google, and how would they find you? 

Who do they trust for reviews and recommendations? 

Think about every interaction a customer could have with you and how you can make that experience more smooth and personable. 

The thing that small businesses have over larger ones is your ability to be personalised, be relatable, be real.

If they contact you on your website, how can you make your reply warm and engaging?

They come to a session with you, what happens next? 

When I build marketing strategies for businesses large or small, I think about three categories: how am I acquiring new customers, how am I nurturing existing customers and how am I re-engaging those who have drifted away?

This is manageable when you’re dealing with a smaller volume of customers, as you grow and expand, you can start to bring in technology and software to help you. You can look at your booking systems and email marketing. There’s so much you can do at each point to make customers feel valued, a big corporation will never be able to compete on this.

Principle #4. Make sure you can be found

I said there were no rules about marketing, but the closest I’m going to get is when I talk about websites and Google ranking, there are some strategies you need to employ if you’re going to be found. 

If you are selling a physical service that relies on your customers going to a specific location, you MUST have a complete Google Business Profile. 

If a customer searches for breakfast near me, yoga classes near me etc, the first thing Google offers customers is business profiles that they think match what the customer wants. Under that you have websites. 

You need to tell Google what you offer and then keep updating it so Google knows you're relevant and active. 

Ask for reviews to your profile and crucially, reply to them. 

Do everything you can to bolster this. 

Next your website… if you are a location business… Do you talk about your location on your website? I know this sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget this when you’re writing content about your passion, it needs to be clear what you do, for who and where.

You should have a unique page for every service you offer to improve your Google ranking, because then you can target keywords. 

Make sure your homepage answers the question, who are you, what do you offer and how can customers take the next step with you? At each part of your website, ask what action you want customers to take?

Note > I have a handy blog on this topic.

Principle #5. Build metrics that matter to your business

It’s really easy to get overwhelmed by the data that’s out there. 

But even as a small business you want to track metrics that show you’re growing. For my yoga studio, other than for my ego, I don’t care how many Instagram followers I have. I know that might sound shocking. But what I do care about is how many enquiries we get each week, and how many of those convert to being regular customers. I care how many people buy monthly passes with us, and what the average monthly spend is. I would always encourage you not to get obsessed with social media or open rates on emails, these can fluctuate, and weirdly you sometimes get great social media engagement from people who never shop with you. Make sure you can 

measure what you’re doing. If you are doing flyers, do you have a unique identifier on it so you know if business has come from this? If you’re doing facebook ads, are you sending people to a bespoke landing page where you can track what they do? Do you know what’s working for you? Please don’t spend money on external marketing without a way of quantifying it.

Note > I have a handy blog on this topic.

So those are my 5 main principles for more meaningful marketing. Always remember to be authentic, you don’t need to be perfect, be personable …..these are what matter to customers.