Using your Small Business superpowers for Success
All too often small business have a belief that the ‘big boys’ have all the cards to play when it comes to marketing and winning at the business of business. In the world of Star Wars, the dominant market leaders are a lot like Darth Vadar and his army… large in scale, well-organised, with massive armies & resources at their disposal. But if you’ve watched any of the Star Wars movies, you’ll know that its the pluckiness of the Resistance, their passion for using any tools at hand and working together as a team that give them the advantage in the most challenging situations. Small business need to adopt a mindset like the Resistance and recognise that they have a toolkit of super-powers ready to use to help find the weak spot of larger competitors, and use them to grow.
So what are these superpowers and how can you use them today to help give you a better chance of success…
CUSTOMER CONNECTION
Small business literally know their customers through direct connection to them through social media, email and face-to-face connection at markets, expos and trade shows. Large organisations have entire departments focused on ‘customer insights’ with specialist research agencies, research budgets and projects often costing $50,000+ and are at such a remote distance from their customers that they lose sight of who they actually are. There’s a lot of thinking about ‘oh, I think the customers probably want ABC’ rather than actually being able to talk directly and find out the truth. Your customers are your MOST valuable asset. They buy from you and are the ones that help to spread the word about your product if its worth sharing. By understanding both the good AND the bad sides of your product and marketing, you’re able to make sure that you’re delivering the value and solution that they’re after.
HOW TO USE THIS:
Be curious. Talk to your customers with genuine interest to find out what they love MOST about your products, what they wish you had, and what they wonder about. Asking them ‘what do you wonder about why we do XX’ gives an opening for them to suggest improvements and negative feedback without feeling harsh. No one wants to say ‘I don’t like your X’ but they generally are more willing to say ‘I’ve always wondered why you do that, when everyone else does the other thing’.
Listen. Asking questions is one thing. Actually LISTENING to what people are saying is something else. Ask them about their lives, their problems, their wishes and you’ll have people who will talk and give you hugely valuable insights. Listen for common words and themes across different groups of people as well. Not everyone uses the same word for ‘too expensive’…. it could be ‘times are tight, I’ve got a cheaper option, I don’t know what makes yours worth paying for’.
Give them something to talk about. A natural habit for people is to share the things that go great, and no so good. Social media is built on the idea of sharing and by letting people know the ins & outs of what makes your product different, you’ll give them common things to talk about. This isn’t about crazy stunts or instagram reels. Nor is it talking all about you. Its about the tiny nuggets of your brand story that are worth sharing…. Did it solve a common problem for someone that is worth talking about? Did it help them feel better in a situation? Did it give them social credibility by being ‘in the know’ on the latest trends?
Be willing to talk to more than your #1 fans. Your friends and family are likely your biggest business advocates and give you all the positive reinforcement around your products. By talking to people outside your inner circle - and especially those you think would possibly be your customers (but aren’t.. yet), you can find out what their barriers are to buying from you. Is it that the shipping is too expensive? They haven’t heard from you? They’ve got another option that is working ok for now? There are a huge range of things that stop people from purchasing, and if you’re willing to talk to them and actively LISTEN, then you’re ten steps ahead in knowing what you need to do to grow.
SPEED & FLEXIBILITY
Launching new products at large organisations can take literally years…. I’ve worked on projects with a five-year launch timeline and the quickest was six months to relaunch an existing product in a new packaging design. Often creative ideas are bashed into a ‘blandness’ of same-same thanks to long new product development pipelines, endless stage & gate process and an organisation with a low tolerance for risk due to scale. Its easier to keep making the big popular products that sell, than risk the smaller innovation products that are leading edge in a category. The openly rely on smaller business to ‘show the way’ with creativity, innovation and an ability to continually test and learn. When you don’t have a giant factory and vast teams of employees, you have the HUGE advantage of being able to just give something a go and be flexible.
HOW TO USE THIS:
Take a structured approach to testing by using a learning-plan and knowing not only what you want to learn, but also the hurdles that you need to reach to change. Doing lots of different things all the time can cause confusion. Taking clear steps to learn with a solid goal in mind gives you focus and ability to change faster.
Be willing to create ‘test’ products and then share them with a group of your target customers - ideally face to face at places like markets - so you can find out the level of interest, what matters most (and least) to customers and also the price that they are willing to pay.
Test different price points and offers. Testing pricing out is a BIG advantage as you’re often pricing direct to the end-customer in very limited sales channels so you don’t need to worry about wholesalers, advising ALL customers of changes or the complexity of advising major retailers and negotiating price increases. By working through different margin models and pricing options, you can see what works best for your customers AND your bottom line.
Scale with caution, so you can change without worrying about huge inventory or giant cost commitments. One of the biggest handbrakes is having all your capital tied up in large stock on hand, meaning you need to sell through what you have before getting into something new. There is the trap of ‘economies of scale’ by getting lower prices per unit when you buy in bulk - but unless you are certain that there is huge existing demand that you can reach relatively easily, then this can be a false economy as it slows down your ability to be flexible and change.
Look for manufacturing options to grow with you. This can be finding a range of different manufacturing options from your kitchen table to small-scale, then growing larger and more complex. This may mean that your costs are higher at launch but by using speed to test and try new products, then you can identify the right mix of ingredients, packaging, brand story etc to take you to the next level.
Get in touch if you want to find out more about our learning plan framework to give you a more focused approach to reducing risk and taking more experiments to learn and grow
FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS
One of the biggest challenges of a large organisation is that everyone has a job and needs to do ‘something’ to keep busy, busy, busy. Everyone has different ideas about what to do, and too often there are projects started all over an organisation that lack a real purpose other than giving people something to do each day. In small business the opposite is true - often there are only a few people doing EVERYTHING
HOW TO USE THIS:
Have a clear plan and short list of goals. Keep iterating and evolving over time but DON’T try to do everything and keep up with what your competitors are all doing. You’ll turn yourself into knots trying to keep up and lose sight of what your business is all about and WHY your product exists.
Find your ‘HERO’ product and keep promoting it long after you think you need to. Coca-Cola has been selling classic COKE for over a hundred years and STILL spends millions of dollars every year to remind people that to drink it. Having a hero product that you know customers love gives you huge confidence to approach new retailers with a proven product and sales success. It doesn’t mean only having one product, but it is a MUCH easier way to get customers talking about your product. If you make the BEST beef sausage rolls, then make sure everyone knows this - and WHY they are the best. Is it the dollop of nana’s special sauce? Organic beef? Hand-rolled pastry? Whatever it is - tell people over and over and over.
Avoid ‘shiny object syndrome’ where you spend your days chasing the next big thing in your category. Working inside a business means you can feel bored with a product & advertising much much quicker and believe that ‘new things’ are the secret to success. This is a risky and expensive game as your brand can feel all over the place, and you can spend a LOT on new packaging, products, marketing campaigns and all the assorted costs that come with constant change. The secret to successful pivoting and evolution is to do it with a PURPOSE in mind, not just because someone happened to say ‘the algorithm has changed and you need to redo all your marketing’.
If you’re a bit more established with a marketing budget to maximise, then check out the master of all things marketing - Mark Ritson - with his top tips to maximise your marketing budgets and apply the fundamentals of marketing to give you a leg up against competitors https://www.marketingweek.com/ritson-small-brands-big-plays/
No matter your size, by using these superpowers above you’ll be in a MUCH better position to take on the opposition, give yourself more confidence and the ability to evolve your business to take advantage of the opportunities ahead. The world of business is ever changing and by talking to your customers, staying flexible and having a clear focus - you’ll be ten steps ahead of the larger slower competitors and also your smaller competitors too!
