You will be able to describe marketing as a set of decisions about a customer, before any channel or tactic is chosen.
Ask a small business owner what they do for marketing and you usually get a list of tactics. We post on Instagram three times a week. We boosted a few posts. We tried Google ads once. Ask who the posts are for and why that person should choose this business over the one down the road, and the answer gets vague. That gap is where most small business marketing goes wrong.
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 the tools that carry those decisions to people. When the decisions are missing, the tools still produce activity, but the activity does not add up to customers.
Take two businesses that both sell chicken rice. One is a hawker stall in a Toa Payoh food centre whose customers are office workers and residents who want a fast, cheap, reliable lunch. The other is a new brand selling chicken rice sets for delivery, aimed at young families who want a weekend meal without cooking. Both sell the same dish to people who want very different things. The hawker stall wins on being easy to find, quick and consistent, so its marketing is a clear signboard, accurate opening hours on Google Maps and reviews that mention the short queue. The delivery brand needs people to discover it at home on a Friday evening, so it depends on delivery app listings, photos and repeat orders. If either copied the other's tactics, it would waste money.
The same is true for services. A tuition centre that targets parents of Primary 6 pupils before the PSLE will talk about exam technique, past results it can back up, and small class sizes. A centre that targets adults learning a language for work will talk about evening slots near MRT stations and practical conversation. Each choice of customer changes the price that makes sense, the message, and the channel where the message should appear.
This is why the course starts with the customer and leaves tactics for later. Every later decision depends on it. Which channel should you use? The one your customer already spends time on, at the stage of the journey where they need you. What should the post say? Whatever names the problem that customer has, in the words they use. How much should you spend? Enough to win a customer for less than that customer is worth to you. None of those questions can be answered for everyone at once.
A business that tries to speak to everyone usually ends up with a message nobody remembers. Words like quality, trusted and affordable appear on almost every website in every industry, so they tell a reader nothing about why to pick you. Narrowing to one customer feels risky, because it seems to turn away business. In practice, people outside the target still buy if the offer suits them, while the people inside it finally recognise themselves in what you say.
None of this means tactics do not matter. A clear decision posted badly still fails. But tactics are much easier to judge once you know what they are for. A post that gets a lot of likes from people outside your target is a weak post for your business, however good it looks in the app. A plain post that brings in three enquiries from the right parents is a strong one.
By the end of this course you will have made the decisions in order: 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. You will write all of it on one page. For now, start with the simplest version.
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 naming who your business or employer serves, and list three things you currently do online that do not mention that customer at all.
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