Micro Marketing

In the space of one day (yesterday) I had three meetings in which clients told me: no, we don’t want to do all of that [proposed marketing]. We do want everything, but less of each. In one case, the client is just looking for 100 leads. He has developed such an efficient selling process, designed to close exactly the number of new clients he’s targeted, with far lower volume of marketing outreach.

This trend of “less-is-more” Micro Marketing is a distinctly new phenomenon, and an alternative to past economic cycles, when businesses tended to cut costs by eliminating entire segments of marketing.

Business managers have changed, gotten tuned in to the times. It’s no longer all-or-nothing. Businesses that shut down marketing altogether are the big losers. Mass media is giving way to targeted and customized media. Similarly, mass handling of big clients has evolved into careful attention paid to more clients with smaller incremental activity. The result is that business moves on, rather than folding up.

Micro Marketing is in parallel with micro business practices of all sorts. One example is Micro Lending, a critical “bottom of the pyramid” component in emerging market economic strategies.

Similarly, Micro Philanthropy is emerging as a means to continue raising charitable donations during tightening times. The opportunity: humanitarian causes are attracting increased contributions, in the light of difficult economic times.

Even the Tom Searcy, the guru of big business hunting, is prescribing a balance portfolio of prospecting in his Blog post: Rebalance Your Portfolio, invest 30% in new, small deals closing within 60 days. No doubt, he believes the big deals are still to be had, but creative approaches are needed during challenging times.

Consumer brands that have long promoted ‘right-sizing’ against their bloated competitors, are deepening their Micro Market positions. Perhaps none could be more quietly conspicuous than Mini Cooper with their very proportionate campaign: MiniMalism, Do More With Less against the goliath US car products.

There are a million ways to apply Micro Marketing to your business (that’s the whole idea). Here are ten points to get in the Micro Market Mindset.

1. Slim down rather than cut marketing tactics off entirely (see: “diversify”, below).
2. Don’t expect the ease of one-stop (or few, large shopping cart) customers. Find ways to profitably serve more, smaller customers.
3. Pay attention to details. Focus on your business fundamentals in order to profit from larger numbers of small accounts.
4. Mass marketing is generic. Understand your customer tribe, and specialize your communications, with 1-2-1 marketing, community building and interactive marketing.
5. Mass media is expensive: emphasize targeted, measurable media and compelling response mechanisms.
6. Win one client at a time.
7. Diversity your marketing activity—there are no silver bullets.
8. Diversify your customer base. Categories (both industry and customer) are being hit disproportionately. If your portfolio is predominantly in a challenged sector (i.e., building materials) expand into others.
9. Investments today will lead to big returns as the market rebounds.
10. If you run a mid-market or small business, be excited!