The title for today’s newsletter captures the single greatest small business marketing mistake I encounter – and I encounter it every single day. Small business owners jumping from one marketing idea to another, hoping for a quick fix. But here's the truth: those flashy tactics won't cut it if you're missing the core of success – a solid marketing strategy. If I could change anything about the way small business owners view and approach marketing – that would be it. Now, let's chat about what I mean by "strategy." I'm not talking about a mere transactional exchange of money for solutions or services . No, it goes much deeper than that. Many folks seem to think that a vague "sell lots of stuff to lots of people" is a strategy. But, let's be honest, that's not much of a strategy, is it? A real strategy is the reason you exist in the market. It's what sets you apart from the crowd, what makes you resonate with your ideal target market. It's about planting the seeds of what you want your market to know about you, what beliefs you want them to hold, and the emotions you want them to feel when they think of your brand. Why is this so crucial? Because crafting a solid strategy is your ticket out of the dreaded "price comparison" zone. You see, it's not just about selling a product or service; it's about creating an experience, a connection, a value that's hard to ignore. So, here's the golden rule: Develop a crystal-clear strategy that defines your marketing purpose, your unique value proposition, and your core message. Here are my 4 steps to create a marketing strategy: Customer Separation First, you need to separate your existing customer base into ideal and not ideal. It's time to only work with the people your company is best suited for – IDEAL customers. This doesn't necessarily mean that you chuck the other customers, but experience tells me that if you are working with customers today, some percentage of them are not profitable for your business. The majority of your customers are actually detractors for your company because they didn't have the right problem, the right location or they didn't have the right situation that your service could solve. Now all you need is the right formula to discover what profitable clients look like in the most specific way possible. Think about your client base today and rank them into groups by profitability first and referability second with your most profitable customers at the top. You want to think in terms of profitability and referability because they are both linked to an ideal client fit. It’s also important to understand if it’s a certain product, service, program, package, offer – or even problem – that results in the most profit. One of the things that I've discovered is that in many cases your ideal clients are ones that have the right challenge, the right problem solved, received value, are getting a great experience and they referred your company to others . If you understand who your profitable clients are you can start to do two things; First, you can generate more business from your ideal customers because that segment wants to do more business with you. If you focus your efforts on creating an amazing experience for those clients who already trust, get value, and are referring you to others. You could actually build not only your marketing strategy but sales, service, billing, and followup - your whole company - around serving and attracting them. Second, if you know who they are and what brought them to you, you can begin to build an ideal customer persona for your company based on historical data, profitability, and referability. Get Clear on the Must-Have versus the Nice-to-Haves When building your customer persona you want to organize your customer base into three customer groups; must-have nice-to-have ideal traits For example, a residential plumbing contractor must-have customers who own a home that they want to remodel or have a plumbing issue. Imagine that same plumbing contractor works with a general remodeling contractor. Now customers who are looking to solve a plumbing issue and redesign their home go in their nice-to-have bucket. Next, the plumbing contractor and general contractor decide they want to focus the business on high-quality fixtures and modern home design. Now their ideal customer owns a home they want to remodel and redesign with a modern theme and is in the top 10% income bracket. Ask yourself, what are those ideal customers for you? Who are your must-haves, nice-to-have, and ideal traits? Solve The Real Problem Now that you know who your ideal customer is, the next step in creating a marketing strategy for your company is to figure out what problem you are actually solving for your customers. Here’s the cold, hard truth—nobody cares about you or what you sell (and nobody will ever care as much about what you’re selling as you do). They just want their problem solved. While your business may be incredible, all your customers and prospects care about is what they want and need, and they’ll go with the business that promised them that.⠀ So instead of just selling a product, communicate to them that you understand and that you get their problem. Help them see that your product or service is the solution to their problem. That is when they will start to listen to you and begin to trust you. So how do you do this? You create a core message that promises to solve that problem. Let’s say you own a tree service business. Your potential customers will automatically assume that you know how to take down trees. But that doesn’t really address the problem the potential customer has. For most homeowners, the biggest problem associated with a home service contractor is about something beyond the basic service the business provides. Homeowners hate having to wait around for their service window. When they hire someone to handle their tree removal, the team leaves tread or wheel marks and stump grindings in the yard. These are the real problems your clients have. So your marketing message is not, “We know how to remove trees” — of course, you do! Instead, it’s “We show up on time, every time.” Or, “We never damage your yard and always clean up when we’re done.” Now, you are probably asking yourself, how do I do this for my company? How do I know the problem I am solving? What you need to do is get on the phone or in-person and talk to your ideal clients and ask them: why did you decide to hire us or buy from us initially? how did you find us in the first place what’s the one thing we should never stop doing? why did you stick with us? what’s one thing we could do to create a better experience for you? if you were to refer us what would you say? what would you Google to find a service/product like ours? I can almost guarantee you're going to start hearing themes that address the actual problem that you're solving. Those are some questions you can start with, but be sure to go deeper in your line of questioning. Have your customers go into detail with their answers. Don’t just ask, “Were you happy with my service?” Instead ask, “Can you tell me a specific time when we provided good service and what we did to make it such a positive experience?” After enough of these informational interviews, you are going to start hearing themes that are addressing the real problems that you solve. Now another great place to uncover these problems is your reviews. But instead of just paying attention to five-star reviews, read the actual reviews line by line. When people voluntarily turn to a third party like Google and leave a glowing review it is an indicator that they have been thoroughly impressed. You have exceeded their expectations. You have solved their problem. Here people are saying the things that you need to know, the things that you that they really love about you your firm or the things that they don't like about what you do. I'll give you a quick example. We had a massage practice that talks all about having the best tables, oils, and most highly skilled therapists but all their customers seem to care about is that their pain and discomfort go away. So that’s the promise they need to communicate, shout about and promote. The rest is an expectation — I mean doesn’t everyone in the massage business have the best tables and highly skilled therapist? What is the real problem that you are solving? That is what you need to uncover. And once you know it needs to be what you lead with for all of your messaging, it is your core message. Guide Customers Through the Customer Journey Customers have buying questions and objectives, and these will change along the various stages of their journey with your company. It’s your job to guide customers through the journey, taking them through the logical steps of getting to become aware of your company, being educated about your company, sampling your company's expertise, purchasing your company services, and referring your company. In just the last handful of years, marketing has undergone many changes. The thing that has changed the most about marketing is how people choose to become customers. That marketing funnel and that linear path no longer exist. The customer journey today is holistic and nonlinear. You no longer see an advertisement for a product, visit the store, and purchase that product. The steps between awareness and purchase are diverse and varied and oftentimes intertwined. People make decisions about the products and the services that they buy out of our direct control. Marketing today is less about demand and more about organizing behavior. This obsession with funnels and funnel hacking and tactics is really driving a lot of challenges for small business owners and CEOs. First and foremost, we have to understand how to guide people on the journey that they want to go on. To make sure you’re providing customers with what they need at each stage, start by asking questions. In the awareness phase, the essential question for a business owner to answer is, “If someone didn’t know about us, where would they go to find a company like ours?” For most companies, the primary answer to that question is Google. But in the tree service example, you also might have prospects that ask a neighbor for a referral, or see your truck around the community or your signs on people’s property. Once you’ve done that for the awareness phase, you move on to the other four stages of the journey. Once they find your website: What do they see when they get there? Do they see other people trust you? Do they understand the geographic areas that you serve? Do they see familiar logos and badges they know? Do they see a company being featured in publications? Is there social proof? Are there reviews? How does someone sample what your company's offering? If you’re the tree service business, that might be getting a quote. But how exactly do they go about getting that quote? Is it a form on your website, or do they need to call or email you? How quickly do you respond? Is the response personalized, or does it feel like a boilerplate offer? These elements all become a part of the customer’s experience and journey with your company. The purchase, and refer stages are more internal. How do you onboard a new customer? What are your team’s checks to ensure that customers are getting the results that they want from your company? What makes a great experience that will bring them back for another purchase or encourage them to refer a friend? This is where you want to get into the buyer’s head to determine what they’ll expect out of you. Once you understand what a customer wants from you at each stage in the journey, you need to make sure that your online assets address those needs. Make Content a Relationship-Building Workhorse The last stage in creating a marketing strategy for your company is content. Customers don’t need a description of your solutions or service initially. Sure, once their experience with your company deepens and they begin considering their purchasing options, they’ll want to know the details. But for now, they want to see how they can build a relationship with your company. Back to the tree service example: If the prospect is looking to get a tree removed, they may not have decided if that’s the best option for them. They may initially just be looking for advice and expertise, thinking there is a workaround that they could choose. The tree service business, then, wants to establish itself as that local source of expert advice. This is where educational blogs and web pages come in. The tree service business will publish “The Ultimate Think Before You Chop Guide: Alternatives To Cutting Down Trees In Your Yard ” — a webpage page that consolidates all of its content around alternatives to cutting down trees into one place. Now, you become their go-to source for guidance on tree cutting. The educational content pages are a way to draw people in who might not even be looking to make a purchase or become a customer. But then, your expertise is what builds a relationship, and trust and eventually convinces them that they do need the solution you offer. Treat content as a branding tactic, not a marketing tactic. Content is how to get people to know, like, and trust your brand. Marketing your company with content is how the modern buyer comes to know, like, and trust you. In other words, it’s the new branding. Content is not just blog posts. Your emails, videos, case studies, referral events, what you do and say when networking; it is all content. And content needs to be focused on guiding people through each of the stages of your customer journey. Content is a tremendous lever to help you guide people through the stages. Landing pages, blog posts, core web pages, free tools, and reviews. These are the types of content that people are going to consume when they're doing initial research and getting to know your company. As an owner or CEO of a small company, you need to consider every piece of your content that you're thinking about producing and make sure it focuses on a stage of your customer journey - Awareness, Education, Sample, Purchase and Refer. Your content will give a voice to your marketing strategy. Your content will be useful instead of just another task. Learn how to future-proof your marketing strategy, stand out from your competition, and get customers to trust you with our strategy consulting services > view here