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 spending my hard-earned babysitting money to buy Love's Fresh
Lemon shampoo so that my hair would smell like "fresh squeezed lemons".
A small, Chicago-based company best known by hairdressers for their line
of permanent wave products did something interesting. The company, Helene
Curtis, created a line of shampoos and conditioners that duplicated the
most popular name brand fragrances but retailed for about half the price.
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 Client's 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 ourting
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?
Not Everyone Wants to Go to the Next Level:Be Willing to Part
Ways
You also need to 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 still there 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" were discontinued, reformulated, or sold.
As you develop at your plans, 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.
One Last Point
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 current marketing you'll need to upgrade
and build capacity with new practices, processes, and ideas.
Judy Murdoch helps small business owners create low-cost, effective
marketing campaigns using word-of-mouth referrals, guerrilla marketing
activities, and selected strategic alliances. To download a free copy
of the workbook, "Where Does it Hurt? Marketing Solutions to the
problems that Drive Your Customers Crazy!" go to http://www.judymurdoch.com/workbook.htm
You can contact Judy at 303-475-2015 or[email protected]
