The basics of marketing are available to us all - how to build a basic marketing strategy for small businesses, Joe Glover

If Aliens landed on planet earth and walked into a marketing conference, they would be forgiven for thinking that the only companies who engaged in marketing activity was Apple, Patagonia, Nike, and the overlord of our profession was Ryan Reynolds.

Now - I’m not saying the world wouldn’t be a better place with Ryan Reynolds in charge - he is a handsome and talented man. And undeniably these companies smash it in their own ways. But it’s a misnomer to believe that we should all be following their example.

Imagine two friends, Mary and Timmy, standing next to each other by the waterside. 

As the sun sets, Timmy starts throwing pebbles into the lake - seeing the ripples spread slowly and calmly across the surface of the water. 

Mary isn’t like that though - Mary summons her inner hulk and grabs a boulder, catapulting it into the water nearby. The ensuing waves engulf Timmy’s efforts making him sad inside.

Paul Dyson’s now famous study into the factors that impact ad effectiveness place ‘brand size’ squarely at the top (i.e. if you’re famous - you’re going to land with more impact). According to YouGov 99% of the UK’s businesses are SMEs. While imprecise as a measure, broadly this speaks to the idea that most of us are playing with pebbles - not boulders. Put another way - being a world famous movie actor is not hugely replicable.

Acacdotally this rings true: most marketers I chat to at The Marketing Meetup are sat alone, or in a small team on an industrial estate outside Newmarket (other market towns are available) with single glazing and a boss who sees marketing as either the selling department or crayon department. A far stride from the steel and glass of the Nike’s of the world.

So - what is at our disposal? 

Well for the most part while the temptation is to want to chat about sophisticated mass marketing and the long and the short of it, just getting the fundamentals of marketing right puts us at an advantage over most of our competitors in an industry where most of us (including me at the beginning of my career) spent time pinging between tactics. 

In essence, what most marketers lack is a proper strategy. But for those with minimal resources - how do we create something that allows us to create a realistic strategy that is actionable and likely to be actually used and not sit in a document? Well, hopefully, this helps…