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When does a service business go for really big ticket clients, with money to burn? When might it choose to stay true to the small clients that helped fuel its launch? This question is partly about identifying smart ways to scale, but it can also impact your fiber and essence: your brand. There are no easy answers, and I would know.
The Pros of Working With Small Businesses
Long ago, I made a pledge. My copywriting and content marketing agency, MarketSmiths, has a publicized mandate to help business owners realize their mission, their value, their worth--while helping writers to manifest theirs. Expectations exist. Even if we wanted to, I'm not sure it'd be a great move to reverse this mandate and turn away from an expanding network and eager client base.
What's more, we admire, enjoy and understand our fellow small businesses. They tend to be driven by passion, fueled with ideas how to improve life as we know it. Over the years, hundreds have trusted us to take their visions and channel them boldly. We're grateful for this--and know from solid metrics (and gushing testimonials) that it goes a long way.
Since 2010, MarketSmiths has mostly served small businesses. I'm not talking about the far-out SBA definition of a small business, which allows for up to 1,500 employees and $38.5 million in annual revenue. I'm talking about three to 75-employee digital agencies, startups of all stripes, boutique law, financial and real estate firms, PR companies, e-Commerce retailers, local restaurant groups, and so forth.
We get a lot from these interactions. For a client that's never experienced impactful marketing, that has an evolving brand, we can act as true strategists: molding actionable content from real clay. This helps each of my writers sharpen his complete skill set--and gives our work a potency and dynamism that feel akin to having soul.
The downsides are plentiful, too. As anyone with a small business client base can attest, budgets can be a challenge. Project scope might change on a dime. Clients may be too busy--pulled in too many directions--to give us the feedback we need to drive their projects steadily forward. Personalities can be tough, too: there's a fear I can relate to, of letting go and enabling an expert to do what he does best. For these clients, there can be handholding, ass dragging, extra work that wasn't in scope. Luckily, this isn't the norm, but it has proven to be fairly unpredictable, making every new project a risk.
The Juicy Deliciousness Of Corporate America
In early 2014, we got a taste of something unexpected. We started getting found and hired by Fortune 1000 companies. They turned to us for the occasional project--and also a few wonderfully renewable contracts for multiples of the revenue we get from small business clients. The clients are great, the work steady, the budgets generous and our margins healthy.
These projects have been so good, it's caused me to seriously rethink our business model. Like a kid with a shiny new toy, I'm pondering how to pivot, even to the point of exclusively targeting these types of contracts . And I've been lying awake at all hours, wondering which direction to go, and how.
It's great to know that corporate teams need the work we do, but their needs are different. Some leverage our team to augment theirs. Others have content mandates they can't fulfill themselves. What they value in us isn't our main value proposition: it's more basic, like our ability to meet timeliness, follow detailed directions and deliver substantive, error-free work.
Based on a limited sample, these clients have been fantastic to work with. They're pleasant, diplomatic and clear, graciously collaborating on workflow, respecting our needs, approving (even prompting) invoices, which get paid quickly. Thus far, we've experienced very little of the price-gouging, payment-delaying procurement practices my friend Jeff warns me about. Yes, the people we work with may whip out the occasional platitude, which runs contrary to a war I once declared, but I'm happy to forgive this because, let's face it: the money is good.
My friend Christina once jokingly described her biggest client, a household soft drink, as the primary investor in her "hobby," small business work. I now understand exactly what she means. If small businesses are our soul, then corporate America is our oxygen. The opportunity is vast--and I keep feeling that with every small project we take on, we may be missing our ticket to massive scaling.
How the Dilemma Impacts Brand Identity
So I'm in a quandary, and MarketSmiths is having an identity crisis. I'm pinning this on my own impatience to scale. And for the first time in a five-year rapid-growth streak, I'm experiencing the paralysis that comes from not wanting to make a single false move. Oy.
Here's where we are: for the past year, we've been selling to both sides. My writers are pleased with the diversity of work. I'm pleased with the diversification of revenue and cash flow--and by the fact that I haven't had to make a choice or, heaven forfend, say no (by far my worst skill).
Our website is a steady small business magnet, and our sales outreach program is struggling to get off the ground. And I'm at a critical juncture in which I need to decide what our brand is, and where to funnel our resources . One thought, courtesy of my friend Pia, a remarkable brand strategist, is to launch a second brand. Another is to keep going the way we are, targeting proactively and being more selective with our bread-and-butter work. A third is to do what my friend Joe Apfelbaum--CEO of Ajax Union, a Brooklyn digital agency--recently did, shifting our sweet spot entirely, and focusing exclusively on winning grand prizes.
- Which of these scenarios would you choose? 100 small businesses willing to pay you $6,000 each per project? Or four $150,000 Fortune 1000 clients?
- Why?
- What if I added these stakes: the small businesses are ready to buy from you, and they need you, desperately. The Fortune 1000 clients can take their pick of vendors, and to get them to buy from you, you'll have to chase them, fend off competitors, and wait on the edge of your seat.
- Help.
