Mike Andes argues that small businesses should market through authenticity and storytelling. Customers often choose service providers because of personal connections (the owner, employees, community ties) rather than trucks, equipment, or polished ads; larger companies may need different, more corporate advertising approaches.
And so regardless of whether you're small, medium, large, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, I feel you should market to the authenticity of your brand. Are you small? Are you trying to figure things out? It's okay to tell people that. And what I told these business owners is like, look, you're just starting out. People are going to be buying from you because of you. Not because of your trucks, your equipment, not because of your offices, not because of your nice advertisements and slogans. They're gonna be buying this because they know you. They like what you're doing in the community. They know your other employees. They might know your family, your friends, tell your story. That might not work in a $10 million company when you're attracting a different clientele and when you are actually a $10 million business, that should be advertising as such. But when you're a small business, I actually believe there's a huge amount of leverage that you can take into the marketing game by being authentic to yourself.
