What kind of marketing do you need? Part 1: Overview

Welcome to The Mountwell Minute, a short, weekly newsletter on small business marketing.

I know you’re busy, so each edition should only take about 60 seconds to read, all of it human-written, free of AI slop. 😁

For this first one, I’d like to talk about an absolutely fundamental question that most small businesses struggle with: what type of marketing do you need?

Right off the bat, the average person - or a marketer trying to sell you something - will start spouting things like “social media,” “search ads,” “SEO,” etc.

This type of thinking is backward, and often causes companies to waste time on activities that make almost no difference.

A better answer stems from defining a few basic characteristics about your business:

Demand: Are people already looking for the product or service you’re selling, or is it something new they need to be made aware of? This informs whether you need to capture existing demand, or create new demand.

Trust: What’s the level of risk someone is taking to buy what you’re selling, in terms of time, money, safety, reputation, or emotion? This informs how much you need to invest in gaining someone’s trust to make a sale.

Relationship: Is this something someone buys once, occasionally, or repeatedly? This informs how much you focus on gaining new customers vs. keeping existing ones.

Competition: How many other options do people have and how aggressive are competitors? This informs the scope and differentiation needed in your marketing.

Source: Where could you reliably find good customers? This informs where to focus your efforts - and whether the traditional list of marketing tactics even makes sense for your business, or if there are better sources of customers for growth.

If you can clearly answer these questions first, then you can figure out which efforts and investments to make, based on their ability to accomplish what your business actually needs.

For a more detailed explanation, and tips on how to apply this framework to your business, read the bull blog post on our website. Or, if you aren’t already a client, book a call here.