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One of the biggest mistakes I see small business owners make is thinking about marketing as a collection of tactics.
Website. SEO. Email. Social media. Advertising. Networking. Lead generation.
I've always looked at it differently. Marketing is really about the entire journey someone takes with your business, from the first time they hear your name to the experience they have as a customer and, hopefully, what they tell others about you afterward.
When I was building TribalVision, this consumed a huge amount of my mindshare. I was constantly thinking about our brand, our marketing and sales efforts, and how we could create a "wow" at every touchpoint, sometimes in the smallest of ways. This wasn't just an early-stage obsession. I thought about it throughout the decade-plus that I ran the company.
Fortunately, I didn't have to own the entire customer journey myself. My business partner, Damien Cabral, complemented me extremely well. While I focused on building the brand, generating demand, and filling the pipeline, Damien focused on account management, service delivery, and creating an exceptional client experience. That division of responsibilities gave me the freedom to stay relentlessly focused on growth.
That's where our restaurant analogy came from.
My job was to build a line outside the restaurant of people waiting for a table. Damien's job was to make sure that once they sat down, the food was cooked just right and the experience was so good that they came back and told their friends and family.
Every week, we married those two sides of the business. How healthy was the line outside? And were the people already inside having an experience worth talking about?
We believed that if we could keep the line robust while consistently creating a wow throughout the customer journey, the business would flourish. That became one of our north stars.
This is where the Customer Decision Journey can be such a useful framework for small business owners. Instead of immediately asking whether you need more advertising, a new website, or another marketing tactic, map out every meaningful interaction someone has with your company.
How do they discover you? What do they see on your website? How quickly do you respond? What does your proposal look like? How do you follow up? How are new customers welcomed? What happens when something goes wrong? And after the work is finished, what makes them want to come back and tell someone else?
Then ask one simple question at every stage:
How can we create a wow here?
It doesn't always require spending more money. Some of the best wows are small. A faster response. A handwritten note. A better proposal. Remembering something about a customer. Fixing a problem exceptionally well.
I've met plenty of business owners who spend more time thinking about expenses, competitors, pricing, and how to deliver their product or service more cheaply. Maybe the menu gets smaller. Maybe the quality of an ingredient gets reduced. Maybe a less experienced chef goes into the kitchen and you hope the customer doesn't notice.
Those decisions may improve the spreadsheet in the short term, but they're dangerous if they slowly make the experience less remarkable.
Sometimes growth really can be simplified.
Build the line outside the restaurant. Create an amazing experience for everyone who comes inside. Give them a reason to come back and bring their friends.
Then obsess over making both sides better every week.
Do that consistently, and you have the foundation for a pretty remarkable growth engine.
