Week 7: Get Ready to Rumble

What’s a pirate’s favorite thing about marketing? The AAAR-OI!

That’s referring to ROI, return on investment, in case anyone’s unaware. That’s how much money you make back in comparison to how much you spend. This applies to many things – marketing, college degrees, etc.

I think all of you are done with reading my enormous text posts on this blog, so I’m making this one more image based! Look at these beautiful results.

Data Sorting

… more data sorting

…………. yet more data sorting

At least you’re funny. Data isn’t.

Why, thank you! I do fancy myself a wit.

Anyway, looking at that last screenshot, it looks like there’s a few big concepts that are common among most businesses.

#1 (by a 100% margin) is WOM marketing. I think it’s really significant that WOM (word of mouth) beat out not only other types of marketing but also important business-wide concepts like brand recognition and personal connection by this much. Clearly, WOM is a lot of businesses’ bread and butter, which makes sense to some extent – how can you get the word out there when your business is constantly overshadowed by large companies, whether in terms of advertisements, mindshare or anything else? Customers you already have vouch for you, that’s how. Slowly, you grow and grow, and you end up solidly establishing yourself.

#2: People love Instagram. It’s free, intuitive/easy to use and has the potential to really expand your reach. It’s much more effective at reaching the current target market (millennials, maybe Gen Z) than other platforms like Facebook or TikTok. Even LinkedIn targets a particular type of people – Instagram has them all.

Also #2: personal connection. When you’re so small, one of your biggest selling points is who you are. It’s not always about convincing people to buy your product/service – it’s about what you’re doing for the community. (For example, a bookstore I talked to hosts events to promote local authors and encourage people to read more. They don’t even advertise themselves – it’s purely for community benefit.

#3: challenges. A lot of small businesses had really important problems, and they loved sharing them with me. There’s clearly a lot of market for something that’ll make their lives easier.

Aaaand there’s also a lot of other stuff. They like using community platforms like Nextdoor, art fairs, and other neighborhood/city events to promote themselves; this is probably because locals are the most likely to come to their mom-and-pop stores and events are a great way to get the word out. A lot of them aren’t really trying to grow further than their current size (although this is probably a result of my bias towards established businesses). They’re exploring or attempting to automate their processes, whether that involves AI, scheduling software or something in between. They don’t like spending money on marketing; they prefer to invest owner/employee time. Etc., etc.

What does this tell us?

WOM has been the key to a lot of these businesses getting as established as they are. Whatever I do, I’ll have to promote that for newer businesses. It’s best for me to use a platform structure similar to Instagram, since that seems to be manageable and provide time value for a lot of businesses. Also, whatever this ends up being, it needs to help businesses foster personal connections with their customers. (There’s a bunch of other factors I’m taking into account too, but I don’t feel like listing everything again here.)

Hmm, I wonder what my solution’ll be. I guess you’ll have to wait until next week to find out.

~Maya