Marketing Strategy · Small Business
The Problem With Borrowed Playbooks
The paradox
The marketing guide meant to help might be holding you back
We’ve seen several different small business owners work very hard to adopt the marketing plans and playbooks used by other companies that have been successful at marketing. That could be franchisees following marketing playbooks or small business owners following marketing plans made by other successful small business owners. Those playbooks and plans can be so valuable because they give owners the guidance they need for their marketing to become successful. However, often those marketing guides that are meant to help your marketing can be what is holding you back.
The mismatch
Written for a business, but not for your business
Generic marketing playbooks are often written with the already successful small business owners in mind. They often feature a large budget, a generic audience, and specific channels. However, those key points may not be applicable to your business at all. The strategy that works is the one built around how your customer actually buys, not the one built around a trending channel or someone else’s playbook. You waste time and money when you lose sight of your actual customer and their buying habits.
While generic marketing guides taken from other businesses can be a good place to start, before you commit to them to a T, make sure you take a look at the way your customer moves from first being aware of your company to when they actually make a purchase. Once you know those things, take that information and determine if your marketing strategy aligns with the marketing plan you are hoping to follow. We worked with a small business owner who owns a retail shop in a small town where people from different states came to do their “big” shopping trips. Following the playbook meant they were using the standard automated ad setup and were accidentally restricting their digital outreach. That was inefficient for getting customers into their store because a lot of their customers lived further away. Once we diagnosed that problem with their base strategy, we were able to adjust their ads so they had a much larger radius, but were targeting their actual audience. Their fix wasn’t completely abandoning the ad strategy they had been given, it was updating it to match how customers actually behave.
The right tactic, the wrong order
We have also seen this as we have worked with several different franchises. Franchisees are usually given a corporate-tested, working playbook for marketing and it works well for the majority of locations. However, they still might find themselves chasing the next tactic or promotion in an effort to supplement their playbook instructions. Here’s the thing to keep in mind, though: the tactic might have been the right one. But if the right marketing foundations haven’t been laid, it might still fall short. In that instance, the real issue might be the order of operations, not the tactic. A playbook doesn’t know what else you have or have not been doing marketing-wise and it assumes steps have already happened when maybe they haven’t.
Where to start
What to ask before you commit to any plan
Whether the marketing plan or playbook that you are using came from a franchise, a competitor, or a viral post, the pattern is the same. It wasn’t necessarily built with your specific business, your specific audience, or your specific starting point in mind. Of course this doesn’t mean that marketing plans or playbooks are useless! They are often a great place to start. The problem becomes when you treat them as a finish line instead of a starting point.
Before you commit to any marketing plan, here are some important questions to ask yourself.
- How does your customer first hear about your business?
- What do they research or compare before buying or booking, and where do they get that information?
- How long does that decision typically take?
- Does the marketing plan or playbook your following assume a budget, audience size, or sales cycle that matches yours? Or does it assume something else, maybe a bigger market or a different audience?
- Has something foundational been skipped that the playbook assumes is already in place?
Find the right fit for your own business
If a marketing plan works well for another business, that proves that it fits the other business, not necessarily yours. Finding the right fit for your business requires actually looking at your own business first. We’re here to help you figure out what order of operations works best for your business or if a marketing plan might be a good fit for your business, feel free to reach out and book a diagnostic call with us. We’re happy to help you find your fix point and walk you through diagnosing what might be causing issues with your marketing.