Mike Andes advises small-business marketing strategy: prioritize direct-response marketing with a clear call-to-action rather than broad branding. He recommends intensely focusing on a very small, centralized geographic area and repeatedly running direct-response campaigns there until customer acquisition, local brand awareness, referrals, and word-of-mouth grow—summarized by his metaphor: "boil the puddle," not "warm up the ocean."
Number one, focus on direct response marketing, not branding. I'm going to have a call to action. Number two, I'm going to focus on a very small, centralized area and do direct response marketing over and over and over again until I start getting customers in that area. And then people start to see me so often that brand awareness starts to be achieved inside of that local market and I start getting referrals and word of mouth and people see me over and over and over again. Not because I have a big business, but simply because I focus on a small area and I focus on boiling it. So instead of trying to just warm up the ocean, boil the puddle.
