Visibility: The Overlooked Foundation of Small Business Marketing

It often amazes me how many managers in large corporations seem blind to the obvious. The starting point of any marketing programme is to make your product visible. Traditionally, in large consumer companies, this involves advertising in mass media and, increasingly nowadays, on social media. However, the bulk of companies are not large organisations selling to hundreds of thousands of consumers; they are niche organisations, sometimes selling niche products and sometimes operating only within a local area. For these companies, a different marketing approach is required.

Let’s start by thinking about shops and retailers. The first line of visibility is the shop window. The majority of local shops don’t know how to dress their windows professionally to attract attention. They may not even have effective lighting in the window. Some may paint their shop a garish colour, which may have the wrong effect. There could be potential customers who are put off entering a shop they deem vulgar.

How many cafés miss out on the opportunity to show they are open by failing to put a table and chairs outside their premises? It doesn’t matter if they are not frequently occupied; it is simply a signal to say, “Welcome, we are open,” and is far more visible than a small swing sign on the door.

Every company has a name, and the more memorable it is, the better. A memorable name is easy to read, easy to see, and in some way identifies the business activity. It is also helpful if there is a distinctive name style or logo that makes the business readily recognisable. So often these are designed on the kitchen table by an enthusiastic entrepreneur who may have a good business idea but little marketing sense or experience. You don’t need to look far to find examples of logos or names that are hardly readable or memorable.

A difficult to read logo and a huge email address

Over a fifth of small businesses in the UK are tradespeople of one kind or another. These plumbers, plasterers, joiners, builders, electricians, and decorators all have vans. So too do piano teachers, cleaners, dog walkers, and home computer specialists. The vehicles by which they move around their local communities are superb billboards, and yet many eschew putting their company details on the side.

I remember working for a large paper distribution company that sold paper to printers and used massive vehicle fleets to make their daily rounds. In order to manage costs, they subcontracted deliveries to companies that used unmarked vans. Ethnographic research for the company showed that these delivery people were the frontline of the business. Every day they visited customers, and because they were subcontractors, they had no real incentive to engage with them. In a trial restricted to a specific location, deliveries were made by employees in vans with attractive livery promoting the company. Van drivers were trained to engage with customers and sported neat logoed uniforms. Business immediately increased, and over a period of a year, loyalty improved significantly.

The lessons from this are obvious.

1. Businesses need to be visible; otherwise, people don’t know they are there and cannot become customers.

2. The way a company is made visible reflects strongly on its image. That visibility should be tastefully designed to resonate with the target audience.

3. Achieving visibility has a cost, and it must pay for itself by attracting target customers.

4. Finding interesting ways of achieving visibility will make a company distinctive and special and may even turn it into a talking point among customers.