What big brands know about marketing that SMEs don't

You're doing the marketing. Posting, emailing, running campaigns, showing up on social. So why does it still feel like nothing is quite sticking?

For most small businesses, the problem is that the foundation underneath all that activity was never built.

Big brands don't just spend more, they operate while knowing clearly who they're for, what they stand for and how everything connects.

Most small businesses skip that stuff entirely in the rush to get to the doing.

In this session, Chris Willman distils 20 years of senior marketing experience inside global technology companies into a practical framework any founder can apply, without the agencies, the staff or the spending.

Topics covered in this session

• Why most small business marketing lacks the foundation that makes big brand marketing work

• The three disciplines world-class marketing teams treat as non-negotiable

• How to identify your ideal customer in a way that changes everything downstream

• Why consistency beats volume and how to build it practically

• A one-page foundation you can start building the same day

About the speaker

Chris has spent over two decades leading marketing inside some of the world's most recognised technology and cyber security brands, building and scaling field marketing, demand generation, brand, channel and ABM programmes across EMEA.

He is the author of:

• The Big Brand Blueprint, a seven-part marketing framework that helps founders and small businesses think and act like big brands without needing big teams, big budgets or specialist expertise

• The Entrepreneurs Marketing Manual, a tactical and hands-on book focused on optimising marketing execution

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Transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Caitriona: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I'll be your host today.

For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses. I'm pleased to introduce Chris Willman, who is a marketing strategist and author.

In this session, Chris will share marketing experience from inside global technology companies and turn it into a practical framework that any founder can apply without agencies, staff or big spending.

If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we'll do our best to answer them at the end. Today's webinar will be recorded, and we'll send a follow-up email with the recording and further resources later today. Over to you, Chris.

Chris: Thank you very much. It's good to connect with everyone and great to be part of Enterprise Nation. It's a community I joined just a few months ago, and I've already had some great conversations.

As you can see, today's session is called What big brands know about marketing that SMEs don't. It's deliberately provocative, but not in a way that suggests smaller organisations and start-ups don't know about marketing. It's more to give you insight from a different perspective that some of you may not be familiar with.

I know many founders in Enterprise Nation have come from larger organisations, but I wanted to share what I've learned in my career in an actionable way, so you have guidance and ideas you can use day to day in your own organisations.

A little bit about me. I've worked for the last 20 or so years predominantly in B2B marketing, with a little bit of B2C, in large technology organisations like CrowdStrike, RSA and Currys on the retail side. I've led marketing teams in the UK, EMEA and globally.

Ultimately, my job has mostly consisted of driving pipeline and sales for businesses. Everything I care about comes back to this: any marketing programme should drive an outcome, aligned to revenue, commercial goals and wider business priorities. Everything we talk through today will keep that in mind.

In the last few years, I've also written several books on marketing, specifically designed for SMEs and start-ups. I'll share a link at the end if anyone would like to read more. I've also founded a couple of digital platforms.

Alongside my corporate work, I've built start-up organisations in personal finance and for first-time buyers, which I'm happy to share more details on after the session.

The question I'd like to pose to you today is: does it ever feel like you're doing the work, actively driving activity, posting on social media, running adverts and showing up in your marketing and lead generation, but nothing is quite sticking?

Maybe nothing is delivering the response you want. Maybe you're not even sure where your responses or outcomes are coming from. That's very common, and it's something I've seen a lot over the last five or six years as I've done more work with SMEs and start-ups.

If it makes you feel any better, you're not the first person to feel that. John Wanamaker, a pioneer of retail in the early 1900s, is credited with saying: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half."

No matter what size business you are, that's not an uncommon problem. What I'm going to talk through now is how you can find out what is potentially working for you, how you can underpin your efforts with things that will make a tangible difference, and how you can use some of the thinking from larger strategic organisations in a way that works for SMEs.

I've had the pleasure of working with some exceptional marketers, both in the UK and globally, and I want to share some of that through a framework you can use.

This is not for businesses that need to spend enormous amounts of money on big agencies. You don't need hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds of budget. You don't need a hugely complicated tech stack or to spend 50, 60 or 70 hours a week on your marketing for it to succeed.

There are genuinely things you can do, even using sophisticated marketing strategies, that can make a difference without consuming huge amounts of time and effort. That's what we'll talk through here.

The first thing I would encourage you to do before any marketing execution, and this happens no matter the size of the business, is avoid putting the cart before the horse. Don't think about the execution before you think about the why.

Before you do any kind of marketing, build the avatar of the customer or, if you're in B2B, the business you are ultimately trying to market to. Let's pretend you are a kitchen fitting business. This is just a hypothetical example.

It's very easy to start thinking about the typical customer who may be relevant to you, but if you write it down and frame it, it immediately puts useful thinking into your head when you get to execution, types of marketing, and where you spend your time and effort.

You can see on the screen an example of how you might frame some basic initial thinking. Maybe the potential ideal customer is someone like Sarah and David. But you can also level that up.

One thing smaller organisations often don't do, and big companies are great at, is thinking about the underlying motivations behind that person.

Not just the demographics that make up your target customer or target business, but what they really care about in the context of your service offering.

Rather than just saying they're 50 or 60, have kids, and have more financial flexibility, think about the emotional or tangible benefits that person might need or want from your business.

By doing this, you create an avatar of a person or business that becomes the reference point whenever you execute anything. This is the person you keep in the back of your head. You're thinking: is this right for Sarah and David?

It might sound a little fluffy, but it puts execution, time and effort into a real-world context. You don't need to spend hours doing this. You can spend five or 10 minutes planning a couple of opportunities, and immediately it gives you a clearer structure for any programmes you run.

The thing that makes this really interesting is something called the benefit ladder. This isn't unique to me. It's talked about a lot in the marketing industry. Big companies use it a lot, and entrepreneurs such as Alex Hormozi have written about it too.

A lot of small businesses don't get past the first one or two steps. But if you go up to the third or fourth step of the benefit ladder, you start to think in ways that let you create opportunities that are much more engaging for your potential customer.

Let's go back to the fictional kitchen fitting business. The feature of your product might be: we design and install kitchens. We use premium cabinetry.

Then you go up one level to the functional benefit. You can see an example on the screen. But what takes it further, and can separate you from competing organisations, is thinking about the emotional and identity benefits.

Again, this doesn't need to take a huge amount of time. If you sat down and looked at the product or service you offer, you probably already know the feature benefit. You probably know the functional benefit.

But if you can differentiate the emotional benefit from the identity benefit, you start to build something that is far less "me too".

Instead of saying, "Yes, we sell a thing," you solve a problem. You solve a situation. You offer a solution. That might sound simple, but if you reflect it in your marketing, you stop competing on commoditised features, benefits and pricing. You offer outcomes that appeal to the avatar you identified earlier.

One exercise I'd encourage any business to do is what I call the swap test. Let's say your business is Acme Consulting. As an organisation, you probably have an about page on your website or a LinkedIn description that says what you do.

Far too often, that story doesn't reflect anything unique. The swap test means taking that same story and applying it to your nearest competitor.

I'd encourage you to do this today or tomorrow. Find five minutes this week. Take the story from your website, about page or LinkedIn, and apply it to your nearest competitor.

I guarantee you may be surprised by how easily it fits. If it does, all you have is a story that reflects a general thought pattern. It doesn't say definitively what makes your organisation yours.

A good friend of mine runs a fairly large physiotherapy business in the Midlands. It's established, his website has grown, his client base has grown and he's doing well. But if you go onto his website, you see generic phrasing. You don't see the things that underpin him or the organisation.

When I asked him to do this exercise and compare it with his number one competitor, it fit completely. So do the swap test.

Look at your story, identity or mission statement, apply it to a competitor, then look at how you can optimise and tweak it to make it much more unique to you. As you move up the benefit ladder, this helps differentiate you from the rest of the market.

Another idea that can change how you drive effort is account-based marketing, or ABM. This is more specific to B2B marketing. ABM means marketing to an organisation in a way that is either highly specific or highly personalised to that business.

We tend to run it in one of three ways. One-to-one might mean marketing to HSBC. Rather than creating marketing that generally appeals to financial organisations, you go down to company level.

You market to HSBC with all its own nuances, but you also think about the segment, the vertical and the people within the business. You make it as specific as possible.

We can also run one-to-few, where we go a little broader. You may already be thinking this sounds more complicated than an individual business needs.

But what I'm encouraging you to take from account-based marketing, and this can work for B2B and B2C businesses, is the idea of being as purposeful as possible rather than trying to be louder.

Instead of trying to be on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, TikTok, your website, email campaigns and everything else all the time, be more deliberate, niche and targeted. That helps you win quicker and connect faster.

As a smaller organisation, you can do this by picking a small number of specific customers, if you know them, or specific types of customers. Identify as much as you can about them.

This is an area where AI can play a big part in helping you gather intelligence, and we'll talk more about AI shortly. The thing I will always say about AI is: overlay your own judgement and decision making before you use its outputs.

Pick a small number of individual customers or businesses that are highly relevant to what you've already defined. What is at the top of your benefit ladder? What is the story that is unique to your business? What are the real values that make you stand out?

Then ask: who is the small cluster of customers or clients you really want to connect with? Show up for them like no-one else can. Take the good stuff, the unique messaging and the strength of your proposition, and match it as closely to them as possible. Put 10 times more effort into those businesses than you would into generic marketing.

That doesn't mean you can't still do broader marketing. You can still email everyone in your database or attend events where you can get wider engagement. But the essence of ABM, when applied to an SME, can help you win small clusters of customers efficiently and turn them into long-term trusted fans.

Because those customers have had an exceptional experience and felt understood, they often become some of your biggest advocates. They can help with references, reviews, testimonials and all the things that add huge value to your marketing afterwards.

One thing big brands do really well is take all of this and wrap it into brand guidelines or a big book of brand identity and messaging. I've worked for businesses with 80-, 90- or 100-page playbooks covering everything about the business: the logo, messaging, words to use or avoid, decks and many other things.

That doesn't work for the average small business. Eventually, it doesn't always work for big businesses either. What you can do is put that concept in a blender and create a single page that becomes your north star.

You've identified the avatar or avatars of your ideal customer. You understand the messaging, proposition and value that can connect with them. You've looked at niches. Take that information, understand your own tone of voice as a brand, and put it into a simple one-page reference.

Big corporate businesses spend a lot of time and money defining tone of voice. You don't need to. But you do need to define what you're about as a business, what makes you different, and the way you communicate.

Then, whenever you publish something, post on social media or send an email, check it against that one-pager. Does it match what you stand for? Does it sound like your tone of voice? Does it avoid the things you don't want to say or do?

It becomes an ongoing cheat sheet and a point of reference, not just a fluffy exercise. It becomes a usable framework and builds consistency.

Consistency is one of the most important things in marketing. If your website sounds one way, someone engages with you in person and it sounds different, then your emails or social posts sound different again, you lose cohesion.

A clear, consistent tone of voice and message helps you connect with your target customers in a way they can recognise and trust.

I would also encourage any business to look at its sales life cycle. Again, this might sound complex, but it doesn't need to be.

Many of you may be familiar with buying cycle terminology and frameworks like AIDA: awareness, interest, desire, action. Those principles can be useful, but what you need is something practical.

A lot of SMEs and start-ups I work with understand what happens when they make someone aware of the business. They understand how they present the benefits of the product or service. They may even understand what happens when a transaction takes place. But they often forget what happens after that point.

That can be where a huge amount of value comes from. If you look at the customer life cycle, what happens when someone buys from you? What is the experience? What is the onboarding process? How do you make them feel when they join you?

If that experience is strong, they are more likely to stay with you, retain you as a vendor or provider, and give reviews and testimonials when you ask for them.

To do this, grab a single piece of paper, write down the stages and sketch out the things you do as a business that align to each stage. There may be gaps. There may be things you simply don't know.

If so, mystery shop yourself or ask a friend, family member, colleague or staff member to do it. Go through the process. Understand the friction points.

Maybe someone clicks a button on your website and it takes 20 minutes for an email to arrive. Maybe the email isn't clearly written. Maybe the post-purchase process is weak.

Map that out. Look for strengths, weaknesses and where you can improve. It doesn't need to take a huge amount of time. The first exercise might take 30 minutes to an hour at most, and it's mostly a one-time thing.

Then, each time you change your marketing, ask where it aligns. Which part of the process are you trying to influence or change? Which part of the journey will that marketing affect?

For example, if you're running a webinar, what is the goal? Are you trying to make people more aware of your solution? If so, don't try to sell to them too aggressively.

Or is the webinar for existing customers? Is it designed to make them more efficient, feel more valued, be more engaged and move towards referral? Know which piece of the puzzle each marketing activity fits into.

One phrase I use a lot is random active marketing. It's very easy, particularly as a founder or business owner, to juggle 10,000 plates and try to run 10,000 programmes at once.

You might be doing a new web project one day, running digital ads the next, updating a social feed somewhere else, preparing for a big event in June or refreshing your store. You end up with a busy, confusing matrix of activity.

The bigger brand strategy is to be more deliberate. Sometimes that means doing less rather than more. Ask: this week, what are my goals? Next week, what are my goals? Make it more structured and layered.

In corporate marketing, we talk about integrated marketing. That means when we do something on the website, we know how it fits with social. When we do something at an event, we know how it connects with email. When we send an email, we know what is coming two weeks later.

It might sound simple, but when you're busy, it's easy to think doing more means having more impact. Strip it back and make it more deliberate. If anyone wants tips on how to build that more methodically, drop me a line after this and I'll be happy to share more.

We can't really talk about marketing now without mentioning AI. AI has transformed a lot in the last 12 months. It absolutely allows you to do more, often more cost-effectively.

But one thing it will never do is scale your own thinking and judgement. Your judgement and decision making should always sit over any output.

AI can provide powerful thinking, and I use it a lot across different platforms, but if you've done the work beforehand, you should always check that it aligns with what you have defined as important to your business.

Before you ask AI to write a chat post, social post or email copy, go back and make sure it aligns with your benefit ladder, brand identity, customer personas and tone of voice.

A practical way to do this is to build those foundations before briefing AI. Write that information into a simple style guide for AI. It should take no more than five or 10 minutes. You can prompt pretty much any AI platform with that style guide before asking it to do something.

For example, I have a Word document saved on my desktop. Before I start any new chat with Claude or ChatGPT, I say: this is what we're going to do.

These are the aims, objectives and outcomes we're trying to deliver. Here is the style guide. Here is my benefit ladder. Here is my brand identity. Here are the customers and personas that matter to me. Now produce that content.

One thing that makes this two or three times more efficient is never accepting the first answer AI gives you. Always stress test it. If it comes back with a LinkedIn article, go back and say: critically assess this against the initial prompt I gave you. Did it hit the brief?

You can also take an output from one AI platform and put it into another. For example, if you use Claude or ChatGPT, split it across both. You can use the free platforms if you want.

But never outsource your opinion to AI. Never let AI become the decision or judgement factor that creates the outcome, even for something as simple as an email, web ad or social ad.

By taking these small steps, you end up with something much closer to your own business values, your own messaging and the brand your business should represent.

To give an example of how this comes together, look at Disney. Disney is an organisation that has been around for a long time and talks a lot about magic. Magic is subjective, but Disney does something incredibly well.

If you go to a Disney park, it feels like Disney. There are unique elements you can identify. If you go to a Disney store, it feels like Disney. The way they present products, branding and the store itself has a consistent feel. If you watch a Disney film, it's the same. There is cohesion in how they market.

It doesn't matter how big or small your business is. You can take the same thinking. You don't need Disney's budget. You need the thinking, process and method. Ask: does this feel like my business? Does this feel like my brand?

To summarise, there are a few rules that can help you win.

Create that simple one-page guide. Before you build or deliver anything, refer to it. Use it to make sure you're looking beyond basic product features and benefits, and that you're elevating your message to the top of the benefit ladder.

Make sure only you could say your story, and that it doesn't sound like something copied from a competitor. When you use AI, use it for leverage, but make sure the opinion and decision-making flow stays yours. That will help you maintain everything that came before it.

If you want to read more, there's a QR code on the screen. My most recent book, The Big Brand Blueprint, is available on Amazon in Kindle and hardback.

If you'd like more information, I've written two eBooks. One is on messaging and proposition, and the other helps you think through marketing decisions before investing.

They're practical and free, with no strings attached. If you'd like either one, drop me an email after this, connect with me on Enterprise Nation as an adviser or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Thank you for listening. We've covered some complex ideas, but I hope it was useful. I look forward to working with you after this session.

Caitriona: Thank you so much, Chris. That was great.

We've come towards the end of the session, but we did have one question from Simon that I think we can address before we wrap.

Simon has asked: "In marketing a service-based business, is it a good idea to reach out to clients you wish to engage with to ask them what pain points they have, and use that to find a means of how you can help solve that pain point?"

Chris: 100%. It's often the easiest and most efficient way to do it.

If you can get what we would call "friendlies", people who are willing to chat, use them. Don't be afraid to ask people questions.

They might not always give you the right answer, and you shouldn't take everything as black and white. Sometimes one person tells you a fantastic story about what they really need, then you revise everything around your proposition to match that and miss the bigger picture.

But any time you have real-world feedback, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, absolutely jump on that.

Caitriona: Brilliant. Thank you so much.

As Chris mentioned, we'll share further resources and links in a follow-up email this afternoon. Thank you so much for your presentation, Chris, and thanks everyone for joining us today.

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