Describe marketing as a set of decisions about a customer, made before you pick any channel or tactic.
Before you choose a single tactic, decide which customer you are trying to reach. The price, the wording and where you show up all depend on that answer, so it has to be settled first.
When small business owners describe their marketing, they tend to list what they do: Instagram three times a week, a few boosted posts, Google ads tried once. Ask who all that posting is meant for, and why that person would pick this shop over a competitor down the road, and the replies become hazy. Much of what goes wrong in small business marketing sits in the space between the list of tactics and the missing picture of the customer.
It helps to define the word properly. Marketing is the set of decisions about who you serve, what you offer them, and how they come to hear about you and choose you. Posting, ads, a website and a newsletter are tools whose job is to deliver those decisions to people. When the decisions haven't been made, the tools keep generating activity, but that activity never turns into customers.
Consider chicken rice sold two ways. One is a hawker stall in a Toa Payoh food centre serving office workers and residents who want lunch that is fast, cheap and reliable. It wins when people can find it easily, get served quickly and get the same plate every time. Its marketing is a clear signboard, correct opening hours on Google Maps, and reviews mentioning the short queue. The other is a new brand delivering chicken rice sets to young families who want a weekend meal without cooking. Those families have to discover it at home on a Friday evening, so its marketing rests on delivery app listings, photos and repeat orders. The dish is the same, and the buyers want very different things. A product aimed at different customers needs different marketing, and borrowing another business's tactics when it serves a different customer wastes money.
Services follow the same principle. Picture a tuition centre aimed at parents of Primary 6 pupils in the run-up to the PSLE. It talks about exam technique, past results it can back up, and small class sizes. A second centre teaches languages to adults who need them for work, and it talks about evening slots near MRT stations and practical conversation. Once a centre picks its customer, that choice shapes the sensible price, what the message says, and which channel carries it.
Three working rules follow, and you can't apply any of them until you know the customer. For channels, go where your customer already spends time, at the stage of their journey when they need you. For messages, a post should name that customer's problem using the words they use themselves. For spending, put in enough to win a customer for less than that customer is worth to you. You can't answer any of these for everyone at the same time. Businesses that aim at everyone usually end up with a message no one remembers. "Quality", "trusted" and "affordable" show up on nearly every website in every industry, so a reader learns nothing from them about why to choose you.
Choosing one customer can feel like a risk, since it looks as though you're turning business away. In practice, people outside your target still buy when the offer suits them, and people inside it can at last see themselves in what you say.
Tactics still matter. A clear decision that gets posted badly will still fail. What changes is that you can judge a tactic once you know its purpose. A post that collects lots of likes from people who aren't your customer is weak for your business, however good it looks in the app. A plain post that brings three enquiries from the right parents is a strong one.
For that reason the course begins with the customer and saves tactics for later, since everything after depends on who the customer is. You'll work through who your customer is, how they move from noticing a problem to buying, why they should pick you, which two channels to use, what goal to aim for, and what to spend. Finally you put all of it on one page.
Your task: write one sentence naming who your business or employer serves, in enough detail that you could picture one of them. Then look at the last ten things you posted or published and count how many say anything to that person in particular.
Write one sentence that names who your business or employer serves. Then list three things you do online now that never mention that customer.
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