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 courting 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 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.

Copyright © 2006 Judy Murdoch

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 judy@judymurdoch.com