Searching for a Universal Solution to Common Small Business Marketing Problems
Advisor: Jaymie Silva
Onsite Mentor: Jayesh Goyal
Small businesses are ‘hot commodities’ right now, with San Jose alone sporting over 60,000 of them. They spice up communities and provide livelihood to thousands of people. However, many fizzle out before they can even really get started, as a result of their struggles with marketing. Many of these businesses are run by fewer than ten people, with no room for marketing specialists and/or individuals who know how to build/promote brands. For my senior project, I am searching for discernible trends in marketing challenges that small businesses in the Bay Area tend to face and working to create a plan or plans to preemptively handle those issues. Through this project, I hope to help small businesses in the region stay afloat and expand their operations, which is beneficial for directly involved individuals (such as employees) as well as customers/society as a whole. I’m conducting this project remotely, with the exception of business site visits I may conduct. As part of my plan, I’m collecting qualitative and quantitative (if possible and legal) information from small businesses that range across a variety of different industries, primarily through interviews. Post-collection, I’ll dissect the data using techniques such as keyword coding and category comparisons to determine any trends or common issues. I’ll then work to develop a solution to one or more issues, the form of which (app, marketing plan, YouTube channel, etc.) is conditional on the actual problem I’m tackling. I hypothesize that my project will allow businesses (that use my solution) to more effectively market themselves, allowing them to become a relevant competitor in their industry instead of fading into the background.
Project Blog
Week 1: So It Begins.
What is a social media marketer’s favorite snack? Well, insta-graham crackers, of course!
Starting this off on a strong note, as you can see. To those of you who don’t know me, hi, my name is Maya, and I’m really excited to share my ideas with all of you through this blog. I hope that together, we can delve deep into the world of marketing and help struggling local small business owners.
What?
Good question. To fully explain why I started this, I want to share some big, scary numbers. Did you know that 65% of all small businesses fail during their first ten years of existence? It’s a hard-knock life out there. Why do they fail at such high rates? Well, this is an interesting question to ask. When a business is first starting out, their priority is not making a profit or anything finance-focused. Usually, that occurs naturally as companies stay in operation and grow. So what are their goals in the first few years of operation? Generally, they’re looking to establish themselves in their market. They want to get their name into people’s minds as a business that can provide quality goods and services in whatever industry they’ve entered into. In other words, they want to market themselves and scrape out some customer mindshare.
Therein lies the problem. When businesses are just starting out, they naturally don’t have many employees, and they tend to limit those that they do have to administrative and perhaps finance roles. At least for the first few months or years of operation, businesses don’t usually have designated marketers. Without professionals, though, they end up making a variety of marketing mistakes. For instance, some ‘shotgun’ by attempting to use every platform available to man. They try social media platforms, ads in print and on television, physical flyers and billboards, and who knows what else. It’s, frankly, a waste of resources that rarely yields results, but they tend to not even realize that because they have no effective metrics to track the success of each individual platform. Yet other businesses rely far too much on word-of-mouth marketing. While WOM is certainly quite beneficial to smaller businesses, it cannot be the only method used unless other aspects of the business are optimized for that strategy. In fact, 91% of businesses rely mostly on referrals and WOM to gain customers, and 80% do not use content marketing at all to support their efforts.
Enough fearmongering for now. What does this have to do with me? Well, I want to do something about this. Small businesses are incredibly important. They contribute heavily to local economies, provide employment for thousands of people and allow customers choice in a world full of monopoly and oligopoly industries. I believe that far more of them would stay afloat if they had some marketing guidance in their first few years. Something as simple as collecting data that suggests that certain platforms have historically been more effective or giving them examples of content that is effectively designed and connects with target audiences could be all they need to succeed in a market where they may have failed otherwise.
That’s what I plan to do. If businesses don’t have the bandwidth to figure out their own marketing strategies, I’ll do it for them. I’m going to determine a way for small businesses to market their products more effectively and efficiently by looking for trends in the marketing challenges that small businesses in the Bay Area face and creating a plan/framework to help them as well as other newer businesses handle those issues.
How?
I’ll be spending my first few weeks reaching out to various businesses and requesting interviews with employees. I’ve already figured out my primary search criteria (more on that later). Because of business confidentiality, the vast majority of the information I’ll be able to collect will likely be verbal, qualitative information (such as “There didn’t seem to be too much interest in the Instagram competition.”) I’ll also collect qualitative data if I can find metrics (such as “the number of views on social media posts” or “the amount spent on x marketing campaign”).
Once I have all my information, I’ll use coding techniques on the qualitative data and comparisons (such as ratios) on the quantitative data to determine what types of problems pop up most frequently. From that point onwards, my next steps get a little fuzzier, given that the solution I end up implementing will depend heavily on what exactly I identify the problem to be. For instance, if I notice that there’s a universal struggle with marketing plan organization or coordination, I might work to produce an app directed at making that process easier. If there’s a struggle with making effective content, I can produce some templates or themes. If they’re primarily shotgunning or not advertising effectively, I’ll come up with an analysis on the strengths and uses of various media/platforms. It really depends.
Now?
So far, I’ve done a few things. First of all, I’ve looked through some literature on my topic, really examining what kind of problems small businesses tend to face as well as marketing strategies and techniques that are useful as a whole. Most of this knowledge will be helpful when it comes to determining what kind of solution I want to build or produce.
For instance, one of the articles I read talked about how the Bay Area’s entrepreneurship culture is unique in that it encourages innovation for social good and ESG-conscious governance within businesses. It’s interesting that this kind of social justice focus is mostly limited to the Bay Area, since I thought it was universal to some extent. This is definitely useful information to consider later on when I actually build my solution, since I want whatever I create to be relevant to the Bay Area but also useful to the rest of the world. I’ll have to keep it in mind.
I’ve also worked to significantly narrow down my business search. ‘Small businesses in the Bay Area’ is a large ask, so I’m going to break down my search field into eight specific industries. This way, I know what kinds of businesses to look for, and I also can compare industry trends against each other. (This is not a final list. It may be added to or (more likely) cut down based on the number of businesses I am able to interview within each.)
I’m looking at: restaurants, snack services (coffee/tea shops, snack shops, etc.), ‘tangible’ services (graphic design, personal training, etc.), ‘intangible’ services (tutoring, event planning, etc.), beauty/nail salons, nonprofits, childcare/daycare
The difference between tangible and intangible services doesn’t really exist. I’ve just artificially created it to make my job a bit easier and make this all more organized. I’m also going to focus exclusively on B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses, since B2Bs have entirely different marketing processes.
I also have to choose exactly what I define as a ‘small business.’ In this case, I’ll define such to mean a business that makes less than $100k in revenue a year and was founded in the past fifteen years.
Okay, I’m finally done.
Given this post is about twice the recommended length, if you’re still here, I’m impressed! Hopefully, my posts in other weeks will be significantly shorter than this one. I hope you guys find my project interesting enough to follow along 🙂 (Is it just me or does that smiley face look incredibly menacing to you guys?)
~Maya
Sources:
Tanimoto, K., & Doi, M. (2007). “SOCIAL INNOVATION CLUSTER IN ACTION: A CASE STUDY OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA.” Hitotsubashi Journal of Commerce and Management, 41(1 (41)), 1–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43295008
https://www.lusha.com/blog/50-marketing-jokes-to-make-you-giggle/ (I'm uncreative.)
Week 2: Things are Happening
What’s a marketers’ favorite drink? Brand-y.
Hi, everyone! I’ve got good news and bad news.
Good News: this post is in fact shorter than last week’s!
Bad News: the puns are probably going to continue.
What’s up this week?
My business search is in full swing. I’m looking for small businesses (in primarily the San Jose and Mountain View areas) and reaching out to see if I can interview them for 10-15 minutes.
My plan has changed somewhat in terms of my search. My original plan was to cold-email or at least cold-reach-out-to as many businesses as I can. I figured that out of 200 businesses, I might get 8 or 10 interviews. However, I think it’ll be a much more effective use of my time to reach out to businesses that I or people I know have direct connections to. That way, I’ll be able to get a far higher yield. This does run the risk of me not diversifying my search enough and focusing on only a few types of businesses, but I think I should be fine in that regard since I’m searching by industry and ensuring I have an approximately-even split of the number of businesses I reach out to within each.
Why am I stalking these poor businesses anyway?
Over the last week, I’ve figured out the interview questions that’d probably be most effective in getting the information that I really want from businesses. Here they are:
What is the name of your business and can you give me a 30-second summary of what you do?
Approximately how much money do you spend on marketing (every month/year/per customer)? [I don’t know if they’ll be able to give me this information, but if a lot of them do it’ll be really useful to compare this metric across different businesses in different industries and with different levels of marketing success.]
Do you have any kind of formal ‘marketing strategy’? If so, what is it? [Not a lot of small businesses do. I want to understand the rationale behind businesses’ choices to have one/not have one, and whether they think it’s necessary or not.]
What mediums do you primarily use to market? (i.e. social media, TV, print, etc.) [On some of these, I can actually find out how many impressions/followers/views they have and use that as a comparison metric.]
-> How did you choose those?
Do you think you have effective ‘brand recognition’ among customers? [Do customers know of them because of their unique products/brand, or is their patronage mostly based on other factors like cost?] How do you know?
Do you have any kind of official marketing team? Why/why not? [Many can’t afford such. If they want one but can’t afford one, that’s a place where my solution can fill in the gaps of what that kind of team would typically achieve.]
Are you looking to grow your business or do you want to maintain it at the size it’s at right now? [The one business I already talked to actually does want to maintain, because they think that growth will take away from their brand and their quality. I suspect we’ll get a few more of these too.]
What do you think are your primary marketing challenges at the moment, and why is that the case? [Might as well hear it directly from them. A lot of businesses already know what their problems are!]
Is there some (existing or purely theoretical) resource or tool that you think would help you better hit marketing goals? [Who knows? Someone might give me an idea I end up running with.]
Anything actually interesting happening?
I’ve also made an email/text template that I use to reach out to businesses, and I’ve started sending out messages and making phone calls. My list of businesses I want to talk to continues to grow - it’s currently at 15-20 and will continue expanding. Next week, I start conducting interviews! I’m sure those’ll be fun.
If you’re reading this and have any suggestions for small businesses in the Bay Area that I should reach out to, I’d be happy to take them. You can let me know at maya.kamala.anjali@gmail.com!
Cheers.
~Maya
Week 3: Facing My Fears
I nicknamed my dog “Number of Twitter Followers” because he doesn’t pay the bills but he makes me feel important.
Oh, look! It’s not a pun this week! Character development on my part.
This week has been pretty strenuous for me. Even for an uber-extrovert like yours truly, going up to random people and asking to interview them is not particularly easy.
Why would you put yourself through that?
Recent work has all been scheduling interviews and collecting information. I’ve focused on reaching out to every small business I possibly can, whether that’s a business I know of, one that a friend/acquaintance of mine has used before, or one I just randomly found on Yelp/Google Maps.
So how’s it going?
So, I’ve noticed something interesting. When in a formal setting, most personal correspondence occurs over email. When you want to ask someone a question or invite them out for a coffee chat, you’ll most likely email them (or text them on LinkedIn, which is basically the same thing anyway). That’s actually pretty different for businesses. When going on their websites, most of them only have phone numbers available, and those that have both phone and email clearly prioritize the phone line. I’ve emailed everyone I can, but I still need to reach out to the vast majority of businesses over the phone.
I was completely prepared to start calling around on Thursday, but then I realized something. If a business gets a call from someone that starts “Hi, I’m a high school student and I’m doing a project…” and then gets into asking them some pretty personal marketing information (like how much money they spend per time period on advertising), they’re probably going to suspect some kind of scam, especially if I call them on a line that’s usually used for orders and such. Honestly, I’d suspect a scam if I got a call like that.
Unfortunately, my ego is pretty fragile, and I wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of potentially being accused of being a scammer and hung up on, so I decided to try talking to businesses in person. That way, they could see that I am actually who I claim to be and not some random 40-year-old man from Wichita. (No shade to Wichita.) Therefore, on Thursday, I instead went to Willow Glen to talk to some small business owners in person!
How’d that work out for you?
I originally walked into Willow Glen with a plan for exactly which businesses I was going to talk to. Unfortunately, most of those businesses were restaurants, and I got there at 10:15 sparkling am, when literally none of them were open. So I, naturally, pivoted course a bit, and started searching for small mom-and-pop stores on the street.
My first attempt, I gave my whole spiel about being a student who’s doing a project on marketing challenges that small businesses face, and then the lady told me that she didn’t speak English. Disheartened but not defeated, I trudged on. (I’m making it sound more dramatic than it was, I just went to the next store.) Thankfully, I soon met with success, in the form of a nice lady named Antoinette who told me all about how she grew her hair salon through her Instagram presence.
Overall, I got to about three or four businesses on that trip, all of whom had different approaches to marketing and different platforms that they favored. In terms of trends, a few things seem to be constant - their reliance on word-of-mouth advertising, favoring Instagram as their primary social media platform, and not spending too much money (or any money at all) on marketing.
I’ve also conducted some other interviews outside of Willow Glen, and I have a few scheduled for next week. For the businesses that I can’t visit in person and that don’t have emails available, I guess I’ll have to call after all. Hopefully, it doesn’t go too badly.
Wow, it’s so nice to see that everything is going smoothly and you haven’t had any problems at all!
There’s two main problems that have popped up so far. Nothing too serious, but I’ll need to think about them.
First of all, when it comes to choosing businesses, I’m falling prey to the availability heuristic a bit more often than I’d like. I don’t have any kind of effective randomization process to choose the businesses that I’m interviewing - I’m essentially just choosing them based on my knowledge or the knowledge of people around me. However, there’s a pretty glaring flaw here, and I’ve noticed that in my interviews so far too.
I am far more likely to know of (and add to my list) businesses that are successful or have been successful so far. If I know of a business, odds are it’s doing well because it’s been able to get its name out there far enough that I know about it. On the other hand, businesses that are struggling more or failing are much harder to come across just because they’re not as good at getting their name out there to people like me.
This is actually pretty noticeable in my interviews. Most, if not all of the businesses I’ve interviewed, have told me that they’re satisfied with their marketing campaigns so far, since they’ve gotten enough customers to keep their businesses afloat and/or help them grow. None are too interested in changing much about their plans right now.
Honestly, this isn’t a huge deal. The fun thing about these kinds of businesses is that they all start from practically nothing or just a few customers. All I have to do to deal with this problem is ask the businesses about their early days and their struggles with marketing then. At that point, they were probably a lot less satisfied with their marketing strategies.
That point when a business is young is really where successful businesses differentiate from those that are doomed to fail at a young age. If I can identify what their struggles were back then, and maybe how they overcame those, I can help younger businesses implement whatever it is they did.
Another (smaller) problem I noticed lies with my questions. A lot of small business owners are immigrants or non-native English speakers, and the questions I’m asking include some pretty complex terms that they may not immediately understand. They’re busy people, and I shouldn’t take up too much of their time, so I have to ensure I verbally reword my questions to make them easier to understand but still convey the original concept I was trying to ask about.
Any idea what your solution’s going to look like yet?
Kind of, but my ideas are still simmering. It’s all subject to change at any point, since I haven’t gotten through too many interviews yet.
Also, I’m somewhat tempted to keep my plans a surprise. Get everyone invested, you know? Curious to see what the mystery product will be?
Hope you guys enjoyed my ramblings. See you next week!
~Maya
Week 4: Same Old, Same Old
My marketer friend quit and started a bakery. I tried to walk in the door and this big swatch of fabric popped up and blocked my way! I backed up; it disappeared. I walked forward, big cloth thing in the way again!
“Hey,” I shouted at my friend, “I can’t get in!”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, “You have to click on the banner to accept cookies.”
I called a business the other day and they didn’t think I was a scammer! I’m calling that a win.
What else has been happening recently?
Honestly, nothing much has changed. I took another couple trips to Willow Glen this week, and I’m also probably going to stop by Castro Street in Mountain View tomorrow to talk to some small business owners tomorrow.
(At this point, every time I go outside, I’ll see a random storefront, yell ‘Small business!’ and go inside to talk to the people at the counter. My friends and family keep teasing me about it.)
I’ve found that going up to businesses, talking to whoever is at the front desk and either interviewing them directly or asking them for a contact of someone to interview works pretty well. At least, it yields a greater than 0% response rate (unlike my cold-emailing campaigns). Usually, they’ll directly give me the contact of the owner or the ‘marketing person’ which is a much more effective way of contacting the business than info@xbusiness.com.
I’ve been able to interview businesses that are part of a fairly large variety of industries. I’ve hit everything on my list (beauty/nail salons, nonprofits, “tangible” services, “intangible” services, restaurants, snack services, and a new category called ‘other’) EXCEPT daycare/childcare businesses. For some reason, all of them think I’m a scammer.
If any of you personally know any childcare-oriented businesses, please connect me to them (comment their contact or share my info with them). I… neeed…. INTERVIEWSSSSS!
So, interviews. Then what?
I’ve started examining my interview data for trends or commonalities I can identify by inspection. There’s a lot.
First of all, they ALL use Instagram. Out of the 14 businesses I’ve talked to so far, I think there’s only been one that doesn’t post on IG frequently, and that business has had the same set of customers for 43 years, so they don’t really need it. Honestly, this makes sense. Instagram’s free, easy to use, and is a hotspot for people ages 10-40, so their target markets are very likely to be on there.
There’s also more of a focus on websites and search engine optimization than I might have expected. More than half of the businesses I’ve talked to say that they pull in a lot of customers just by making sure their website ranks high in search results. This does depend on industry, though (for example, it’s a lot more helpful with things like beauty salons and tutoring organizations).
Probably the most important piece of information I’ve seen so far is every business’s reliance on word-of-mouth marketing. Like I said last week, I’m mostly interviewing businesses that have ‘succeeded’ or are doing well in marketing, and just about all of them say that WOM has been the primary driver for their growth. It seems that, for most businesses, after a certain point in their growth (which depends on the business itself - it could be when they acquire their first customer or when they acquire their first thousand) it’s driven almost entirely by their current clients referring them to others. It’s a snowball effect - the more customers they get, the more they grow! For businesses looking to stay small, it seems to be a pretty sustainable strategy, surprisingly enough. It seems that the reason most small businesses fail is that they just can’t get enough customers to get to that point. Naturally, that’s what I should focus my ultimate creation for this project on. How do I help businesses get enough customers to set the snowball rolling? That’s probably where all the other trends I’ve observed come in. I need to determine what tactics work and what don’t and incorporate all of that into my solution.
All according to plan, of course.
My last couple of sentences probably seem a bit vague. I assure you, though - I do have a plan, and it continues to develop the more information I collect.
I’m not just saying that to reassure you that I’m on track with this project - I think I know what my final product is going to be! I’m keeping it a secret, though, at least until I’ve worked out exactly how to build it.
In terms of my short-term plan, I’m going to continue interviewing businesses for about two more weeks while simultaneously reorganizing and analyzing the information I have right now. After that, it’s full speed ahead on my solution!
Here’s to a fruitful week of interviews. See you next Monday (and wish me luck on college decisions)!
~Maya
Week 5: On and On We Go
Why did the cookie monster apply for a marketing job? He heard they were tracking cookies.
Love the food-related ones.
This is going to be a very short update, because it’s spring break and you shouldn’t have to read through my walls of text and also because I haven’t really done anything recently (or, at least, not anything special).
How have you been, Maya?
Well, thank you for asking! A lot of college decisions came out this week so I’ve been suffering for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, interviews have been going just fine and I’m currently up to 18 in total. I’m going to get to 20 by next week, and then I’ll stop that part and begin analyzing the data in earnest.
The bullet point notes that I write after each interview have been progressively getting longer and longer. The first one I ever wrote (business name not included) looked like this:
-only WOM advertising
-don’t want a large business, just enough quality clients to charge a good rate and do quality work
-offering discounts/advertising only brings in people who want the one time low rate and doesn’t yield repeat business
-they’re in a residential home (on a plot that also has a home near it) and if they advertised people would get the mistaken idea that its in a garage or something unprofessional like that
Now, my notes look more like this:
-sell children’s books, toys, etc.
-don’t really spend money on marketing. most of the money spent goes to events (that they host to fulfill their goal of bringing literature to the community, not really for marketing purposes, they don’t even promote themselves during the events). other than that, they spend money on upkeep for eventbrite, website and social media platforms
-in terms of social media, mostly Instagram because it’s easy (15-person biz, people wear many hats, they need to be able to manage it and they’re comfortable with IG). used to use Facebook but don’t anymore
-a lot of their marketing is thru their weekly newsletter (7000 subscribed, 6000 active, 3000 regularly open and read emails) and their book fairs are huge (standard for other book fairs hosted by schools around)
-most people come to the business bc it's been such a stable fixture in the community (been around since the late 1900s)
-aren’t really looking to grow the business necessarily
-primary marketing challenge: manpower. they need someone to manage the instagram and they’re slowly working on updating the very old website (don’t have funds to hire someone to do it) so that’s all v time consuming and labor intensive
-resource: some way to know exactly what certain actions will cost (ex. updating their website. how much exactly? are there tiers of website updates that cost different amounts? stuff like that)
Anything else?
Nope. Still reading literature on occasion, still thinking about possibilities for my end product. (I’m currently trying to identify good prototyping software for it. That’s all I’ll say, though.)
Have a good me-free spring break, everyone!
~Maya
Week 6: The Chaos Continues
A social media marketer lost his job and went to work on a farm.
He worked hard, but had one weird quirk: every morning, he would do a belly flop into the hog trough. After a few days, the farmer had enough.
“You city folks sure are strange,” the farmer said. “Why are you always floppin’ headfirst into the pig slop?”
“Sorry, force of habit,” the social media marketer replied. “I’m trying to make an impression in your feed.”
Anyway, this week’s title was mostly a joke. There’s not actually all that much chaos. Sorry to disappoint…
Are you done yet?
Interviewing? No. I still have to get two more businesses. It should be done pretty soon, though - probably by next week.
Compiling all my data is contingent on me finishing my interviews, so it’ll take a bit longer too, but I’m nearly done inputting all of the data that I have so far.
Inputting where?
Good question. Since I’m mostly working with qualitative data, I’m using a technique called coding, which is essentially just sorting for keywords.
To code, I’ll split my interview notes up into individual ‘lines’ that represent each concept I discussed with my interviewees and put each of those on different rows in the spreadsheet. I’ll then extract keywords from the interviews and write them down in the ‘Code’ column.
Once I’ve added all the information, I can count the frequency of certain keywords as well as how often different variations of each keyword (i.e. spending (yes) vs spending (no)) show up. This will give me a better/more accurate idea of what trends actually exist in the data, rather than me just guesstimating/eyeballing it.
I’m also collecting whatever quantitative data I can. For example, for some of the businesses, I know the exact amount they spend on marketing, so I want to compare businesses that spend less/more and their keywords. Also, all of the businesses I interviewed use Instagram, so I’ll compare their follower counts on the platform to this other information. (It’ll make more sense when I do it.)
What’s it look like?
This.
This is just a snapshot of a few rows - the complete sheet stretches over 200.
I should be completely done with my logging (including all interviews, all coding, what qualitative data I can collect and division by industry) by next week, at which point I’ll be able to update on what exactly I’ll be doing to build my solution.
🫡
~Maya
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
Week 8: Another One Bites The Dust
Why did the ghost’s marketing campaign fail? You could see right through it.
A good ol’ classic pun for you guys this week.
Anyway, the college decisions saga continues. As of the day you’re reading this post, I am most probably in Nashville touring colleges. Fun stuff!
More importantly: the plan for what I’m going to build is coming together. Most of the data that I’ve looked through paints a very clear picture of what works for small businesses and what they need, and I think my solution’s an innovative way to help them with all of that.
So what is it?
Now, most of the businesses I talked to said that most of their success can be attributed to WOM marketing (in other words, their current customers told other people about their business and they gained new customers that way). When they started their businesses, they were doing a lot of advertising, but that all died down as the WOM outreach got big enough that it was fueling their growth on its own. (1 customer -> 2 customers -> 4 customers -> 8 customers -> etc. You see?)
Where most unsuccessful businesses die is before this stage - they just can’t get enough customers to justify the cost of staying in business. What I need to do is help them get to the point where they can drive their own growth.
How can that be done? There’s almost certainly many customers out in the market that would be happy to buy from or patronize these establishments, if only they knew about them. If we can get the word out that this business exists, people who find out and who need the product/service it provides would know that it is a feasible option for their needs.
Sure, in theory.
It’s true that that is what all businesses are trying to do - get their names out there. There’s no reason to expect that I can do a better job at that than them, because, by its very nature, there’s no way to predict the success of a certain marketing strategy. It may go viral, or you may only reach your followers. You simply have to use the marketing principles you know, try what you think will work and hope for the best.
It really does seem hopeless for smaller accounts, though, just like with smaller organizations, since it’s so hard to gain traction. There needs to be some way for these businesses to directly interact with people in the local community outside of their current customers and have an opportunity to communicate the value of what they’re providing to them. (And not just Nextdoor, either - something easier to sort through and focused on local commerce rather than individual concerns).
You still have not told us exactly what you’re planning to do.
Think ‘Nextdoor for Small Businesses.’
I want to prototype an online platform where small businesses get the opportunity to post about who they are and what they’re doing. Through it, they’ll be able to reach a group of individuals who have joined the platform solely for the purpose of finding out about local organizations they can buy from and support.
Businesses will be interested in joining the platform since it does not take much effort to make a post however frequently they’d like (the post structure is very similar to Instagram, although it limits to maximum one post per week). When these businesses make their posts, the platform will encourage them to attach some type of discount (15% off any purchases in the next week, for instance). As a result, individuals in the area will also be enticed by the platform because they have an opportunity to find a good deal on something they’re looking for there.
Let me give you an example of how something like this might work. Say we have a user who’s interested in going to a boba shop to buy some bubble tea. Wanting a discount, they might hop on the platform, select the filters for ‘local boba shops’ or ‘local coffee/snack shops’ and see recent posts that have been made by boba businesses. If they like it, they’ll probably come back, and the business that made the post will have received a new loyal customer.
For a platform like this one, it’s important that we have a significant user base, otherwise the marketing these businesses are doing will be entirely pointless since there are not a lot of people seeing their posts. Beyond the discounts encouraging individuals to join the platform, there are also a couple of other strategies that will be used. For one, partnerships can be built with small businesses where they promote the platform as a site where they ‘post discounts and good deals once a week.’ Their customers, wanting those deals, will join the site, where they’ll also see offers from other businesses that they might be interested in taking up. There’ll be an individual link associated with each post, so users can easily share them with friends/on other platforms.
I want to encourage not only business participation, but also active user participation, so I’ll also add a feature that allows users to express their approval/disapproval. This will either come in the form of emojis that users can react to posts with (perhaps ones related to the content of the message, like donut emojis for a donut shop) or an ‘I Tried This Deal!’ popup that users can click a thumbs up on if they enjoyed what the small business had to offer.
There are other, somewhat similar platforms like Nextdoor and Groupon, but none really come close to what this aims to do. Nextdoor is focused on, like I said, individual connection within neighborhoods and local areas, and Groupon is more a site where customers can find coupons for all businesses.
What an ambitious plan.
Well, this is a twelve-week project, so not a lot of time to develop a whole new social media platform or anything like that. As a result, my plan for the last few weeks of this project is to roughly prototype the platform using Adalo, so we can get an idea for what it might look like and what features it’ll have. I also do want to reach out to the businesses that I interviewed to request their feedback on my idea. If they think it’d be beneficial to their businesses, I’ll go ahead and try to develop it! (That comes much later, though.)
~Maya
Week 9: Are We There Yet?
Why did the marketer dump her boyfriend? Lack of engagement.
Hey, everyone. I’m afraid I don’t have too much of an update to share with you this week, since I haven’t really been able to get too much done. I’m in Anaheim for the DECA ICDC conference, and I’ve been pretty occupied with that. (By which, of course, I mean that I’ve been procrastinating. Just kidding- or am I?)
Anyway, with what time I’ve had, I’ve been looking more into Adalo, the platform I’ll be using to prototype this app. It’s fairly simple to use, and it’s pretty low-code, so things shouldn’t be too hard to set up.
I’m using a pre-made social media template to develop this app, and I’ll throw in some screenshots below so you have an idea of what I’m working with. (They’re from a completely different business - don’t mind that.)
Also - names. I spent some time brainstorming good potential names for the app, and, so far, what I’ve come up with is BizConnect. I am… not a huge fan of that name, so the hunt shall continue!
Screenshots.
Do you see the vision? Sure hope so.
You know what’s funny? I basically just asked a bunch of businesses what worked for them when it came to marketing, and when they told me social media was useful I turned right around and decided to make my own social media platform.
Anyway, until next time, when I’ll hopefully have made more progress.
~Maya
Week 10: Progress is Progressing
Wanna hear a funny joke about a marketer? Download my free e-book and find out!
If there’s anything good about all of this, it’s that you’ll only have to put up with two more weeks of my horrible marketing jokes. You’re welcome.
Grindset mindset or procrastination station?
Nope, I actually got some stuff done. I have a functional prototype! If you want to see, maybe even make a post of your own, hop onto https://maya-srirams-team-1.adalo.com/bizconnect?_gl=1%2Ab9a30j%2A_ga%2AMTgzMjEzMzMwMi4xNzEzNTUzNzEw%2A_ga_SWT45DV35L%2AMTcxNTAyNjk5Ni4yLjEuMTcxNTAyOTE2OC41OS4wLjA.&target=9zekit1nhm2wy3c0zass3ibnr¶ms=%7B%7D.
(That is not a virus.)
Since I was working off of a weight training social media platform template, there’s a couple of old posts on my site that pertain to that. Ignore them when testing it out.
Reminder: this is just a prototype. This isn’t the final product, it’s just a loose template of what this platform will look like. I want to add structures like a way to filter by location and type of business (maybe hashtags of some sort?) as well as a couple of other features (like admin post deletion ability) but I don’t even know if those things are available on Adalo. I’m going to spend another week dealing with the platform and seeing what else I can build, as well as talking to whichever small businesses I can reach and asking them what they think of what I have so far.
I don’t really have a lot to say - take a look instead.
I’m not clicking on that link.
Fair enough. Have some screenshots instead.
Cool, huh?
I should probably start making my final presentation soon…
~Maya
Week 11: I Actually Did Something?
Did you hear about the golden rule of social media marketing? “Tweet others how you want to be tweeted.”
That joke makes a little less sense than usual, I think. I like the pun, though.
Anyway, it looks like I have a basically functional prototype site, minus a few issues.
Your app is perfect! What issues could there possibly be?
One of those issues was the lack of a scroll bar, since that can make the UI confusing for some devices, so I decided to see if I could add one. I can, but it’s a long, involved process that I’d have to repeat for every page of the app (since each is a different length). I'll probably only be able to implement that in the final version of the product.
Another issue that I’m trying to deal with is the ability to delete posts and accounts on the administrator side of things. Adalo is really inconvenient for that, since the app’s backend isn’t really directly available to developers. It’s mostly focused on frontend UI modeling. I’ve been looking into different ways I can moderate the platform if I decide to leave it on the Adalo site.
There's also the matter of sorting by industry and location. Once again, difficult to build on a prototyping platform, but I'm doing what I can.
Do you think it’s viable?
Well, I’ve talked to a few people associated with small businesses and asked them whether they’d use the platform. Mostly, the answer is yes, since the barrier to entry (or usage, in this case) is so low. Of course, I don’t know if that’ll hold when they actually have the opportunity to make a post, but for now I’ll take it.
But if using the app is free, how will it make money? Most likely paid advertising. If a particular business wants to elevate their result to the top of searches for a specific tag for, say, one week, they can pay a set fee to do that. That’s the simplest form of the structure; I can also try different things such as a ‘higher tier’ of business discounts unlocked by paying app users. That comes later, though.
Is there a way I can learn all about your project in under 15 minutes without having to read through all your blog posts?
Thank you for asking! Why, yes, there is. Next Saturday, I’ll be presenting about my senior project at the BISV Senior Project Showcase. I’ve been working on my presentation for it for a while now.
I don’t know exactly what time I’ll be talking, but the event runs from 8:30am to 2pm, so you should stop by the BISV Upper School branch whenever you can and watch seniors like me discuss some really cool stuff.
Hope to see you there!
~Maya
Week 12: A Satisfactory Conclusion
Why did the marketer fail at honey harvesting? Instead of sourcing from the hive, he went B2B.
That one made me giggle.
Wow, it’s sad to think that this will be the last ever joke that you read from me on this senior project blog. I’ve had SO much fun on this journey with all of you, ranging from embarrassing myself asking random business owners for interviews to fighting with Adalo and its limited options.
I really think that my idea and prototype have potential, and as I move into college, I’m going to see how I can expand on everything I’ve done so far and build a functional version of my app. If I can help even one small business get one more customer, I’ll have done my job.
Some personal reflections.
In my entire interview process, there were, of course, businesses that were very curt to me and didn't help too much at all, but there were other businesses that went above and beyond to do what they could to help me. They answered all of my questions, making sure to be kind and friendly to this random kid that just showed up at their business asking all sorts of vaguely invasive questions, and sometimes they even gave me personal advice. Above all, they seemed grateful for what I was doing.
It warms my heart to know that there are small businesses out there that saw genuine value in my project. Maybe they’ve forgotten about me, or maybe they’re anticipating the results of my work. Who knows? No matter what, I’m going to do what I can to help them out.
Everyone! Do me a favor and patronize:
Moda Salon and Spa
Antoinette's Hair Salon
Dolce Sicilia
Kiss&Makeup
Strength Coach Nick
Code for Cause
Closing the Divide
AnyaPanda
MedSetGo
San Felipe Cleaners
Life Skill Learnings
Gussied Up Dog Boutique
Willow Glen Collective
Mesh
Marchup
Sweetdragon Bakery
Angel from the Property Network
Hicklebee’s Bookstore
You know, even if the results of my project don’t help these businesses directly, maybe I was still beneficial to them in another way. Maybe I helped owners and employees realize that they’re not alone in this goal of establishing themselves in the market and doing what they love, that there are others out there looking to help them, make their lives easier, and enable them to pursue success as a small business.
I’m so ready for the next chapter of my life and my work. Let’s see where BizConnect and my love for small businesses takes me!
Signing off (for now),
Maya