Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a podcast with ideas, strategies, and tactics to help small businesses create smarter marketing. I’m Mia Fileman, a professional marketer, and the founder of Campaign del Mar. In this show, I chat with creatives and strategists about the different aspects of marketing, but without the fluff. Let’s dive in!
Hello everyone! Welcome to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
Today on the show, my guest is Lauren Pickering – a professional marketer with 15 years’ experience across consumer brands, education, and professional services. Lauren has been the group brand manager of Maybelline New York, the senior marketing manager for Barbie, and is now the executive director of marketing for Lauriston Girls’ School.
Welcome, Lauren!
Lauren Pickering 0:54
Thank you for having me, Mia!
Mia Fileman 0:57
So glad that you’re here! It has been an absolute pleasure working with you – not once but twice over our careers. Even to this day you are a guest strategist in my signature program, Campaign Classroom. I think it goes without saying that I can’t get enough of you.
Lauren Pickering 1:16
Likewise! I love joining every Campaign Classroom you run, meeting the new crew, sharing a little bit of my experience with your team, and learning from them as well.
Mia Fileman 1:28
What experience you have! You’ve had an incredible career! I’d love to know from you, what have been some of the highlights?
Lauren Pickering 1:37
Highlights of my career! I guess you touched on it before that my career was really blessed to start and have a good 10 to 12 years in some incredible brands – Maybelline New York, Garnier, Mattel with a brand like Barbie.
I think, during that phase of my career, seeing Maybelline New York transition from a really pop sugar, teeny, tween brand to overtake Revlon and Rimmel to be number one in Australia, signing Ruby Rose as brand ambassador, and from changing our product mix, we became the number one brand in Australia with a really great, edgy look and feel, and a much more elevated and older demographic. That’s probably a really key highlight for me in the big brands.
I then made the switch to education, which is a smaller industry, smaller world, but it’s much more involved for the community that you’re working with. Working with community, working with people, working with purpose fills my bucket every day, so that’s a highlight as well.
Mia Fileman 2:56
I remember when we were working together – this was like 15 years ago – you said to me, “I think one day I might be a teacher.” I said, “But, Lauren, you are the most talented marketer I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with! I’m sure the education space would love to have you as a teacher, but you’re so good at marketing!” I think that you’ve found your calling which was to work in marketing but for the education sector. Awesome!
Lauren Pickering 3:24
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 3:27
Today, I really want to talk about strategy versus tactics in this episode because this is really foundational knowledge that every small business owner should probably start with. I work almost exclusively with small businesses. To be honest, what I see a lot is that the small business owners are putting the tactics ahead of the strategy.
Let’s go back – because marketers just love their jargon – and let’s define what is strategy, what is tactics, and we’ll go from there.
Lauren Pickering 4:03
Yeah, sure!
When you say strategy, it’s funny. Marketers do love their jargon, but the jargon is somewhat overused and somewhat different, depending on who you speak to. I don’t know if there’s a clear-cut definition of strategy.
One that I know of is a guy called Mark Pollard. He says that strategy is an informed opinion about how to win. Look, I think that that’s a really good definition for its simplicity. I guess there are three main parts to that – one, the informed opinion. I’m a stats and creative person. I truly think that marketing is a balance of data and intuition, science and art. I love that informed opinion puts those two together.
For me, the best and most important step of any strategy is understanding your market, your customer, and your offering. That research phase of pulling together a strategy is often overlooked. I know, Mia, you have said time and time again that it takes you 20-plus hours to create a marketing campaign. I would argue that that’s after you are informed and have done your research. Even then, you’re doing well.
When we worked together at L'Oréal, we used to spend months – once, twice, sometimes even three times a year – pulling together strategies and go-to-market plans. These would be 100-plus slides in PowerPoint. Most of them would be the research phase.
Look, I think for small business, I wouldn’t expect the same level of scrutiny or intensity in your research but, having written strategies for a number of small to medium businesses, it was always the research and understanding phase of a strategy that I would spend the majority of my time on because that is where you get your insights and you get those “aha!” moments and how you start to unlock originality.
Also, the informed opinion piece is important because opinion is an important word. This phrase clearly highlights that a strategy isn’t an opinion. It’s a forecast. While a good strategy gives you a good chance of achieving your objective, it’s still not guaranteed.
Mia Fileman 6:38
I love that. That is so true. That’s exactly what I thought when I read that definition.
You touched on a really interesting point which is that small business owners tend to skip the research phase or do it very lightly. I think that comes from them thinking that research is expensive. The truth is that it has never been easier for small business owners to tap into really valuable and really insightful research even on a shoestring budget.
Lauren Pickering 7:09
Yeah, I would agree with that. You’ve got databases at your disposal. You’ve got social media trends that you can tap into straight away. There are Google Analytics tools for free. I think the most expensive part of research is time. Another free one is observing.
I remember working in Mattel. We tasked ourselves to get out into shops – Target and BIG W and those shopping centres once a month and really understand where people were purchasing and some of their behaviours when doing it. It sounds a little creepy to observe people, but you do it subtly and you get really informed about what is happening at that ground zero level. That’s free. That just takes time.
Mia Fileman 7:59
Correct. We did that at Maybelline as well. We would go to festivals that we were sponsoring for Maybelline. We would walk around, and we would observe our target audience in their natural habitat and see how they dressed, how they applied makeup, how they talked to their friends, what language they used so that we could glean all of those insights and work it into our marketing plans.
Lauren Pickering 8:25
Yeah, 100 percent.
Mia Fileman 8:28
The strategy is the plan. It’s what we want to do. Then, what are tactics?
Lauren Pickering 8:35
The other part of that Pollard definition that’s really interesting is the “how to win” and “how” is important because, without implementation or without some tactics following on from that, it’s just a document that collects dust. Hopefully, your strategy can unlock a vision that sets you up with some sort of sustainable competitive advantage. There’s some more jargon for you! But that’s where the short- and long-term tactics implementation plan comes to light.
I know that, in Mark’s definition, he says, “to win.” For me, that’s a little bit dollars-focused, and I think that there’s more purpose that should be associated when people are writing a strategy to try and unlock objectives beyond the dollars. That also helps to give you insight as to where your short- and long-term tactics should go.
Mia Fileman 8:35
Absolutely.
Tactics are how you will execute the plan – how you will take that strategy and make it happen, right?
Lauren Pickering 9:43
Yeah.
A good strategy for me, if I reflect on some of the best strategies that I’ve been involved in putting together, the short-term tactics, the short-term implementation have been very clear when you put together a strategy, but the best strategies I’ve been involved in have been loose enough to give you a vision for the long-term but not necessarily all the answers right away.
I touched on Maybelline before. In any annual strategy we would do, Mia, we would look at the next year’s products, the advertising budget, the messaging, the merchandising involved, but I guess something that really changed the game for Maybelline was how that brand was moving the dial from being something that’s very – who was Buffy? – whoever that girl was, she was the face of Maybelline, dressed in pink, selling lip gloss, to being really about edgy eye makeup – eyeshadow, eyeliners, something that’s fashion-forward. That’s a long-term game that required years and years of tactics building up.
Mia Fileman 10:57
I have to Google her name. Sarah Michelle Gellar!
Lauren Pickering 11:01
Yes.
Mia Fileman 11:02
That’s the one.
Do you think that there’s still a place then, especially in the small business environment, for that 20-page marketing strategy?
Lauren Pickering 11:16
For small business, you know what? I’m going to say yes, but I’m also going to say no too. The catch-all answer. The “yes” part of it is that, yes, you need to spend that time tapping into as many research and insights as you can, but what you want to do is continue to condense and finesse and importantly prioritise until you get something that’s really clear to work with.
Today, if I’m looking at my strategy right now at Lauriston Girls’ School, my three key go-to documents include (1) an overarching roadmap which is quite brand-focused, it looks at objectives, it looks at messaging, it looks at our point of difference, it touches on the vision; (2) my budget which is very tactical and implementation-based; and (3) my calendar which is again very tactical and implementation-based. The roadmap is kind of a condensed version of the 20-page or 100-page or whatever-it-is-page strategy.
Mia Fileman 12:23
Yeah, I completely agree. Very diplomatic answer.
Let’s illustrate this with an example because some of the people listening might be like, “They’ve veered off into marketing jargon language.” Something I saw recently which I loved – and I know you did too – was that Arnott’s Tim Tams have launched a golden ticket promotion with Tim Robards who is the first bachelor. This particular competition is a tactic, right? As is deciding to bring on Tim as an ambassador for Arnott’s Tim Tams. However, these tactics would have derived from a wider strategy around why Tim is a good fit for this particular brand.
Lauren Pickering 13:16
Yeh, definitely, and why a competition is a good tactic for them.
Tactics can be anything – event-based, competition-based, discount-based – anything you want. I think what you and I know is that, if you are a brand who sells goods – like Coles and Woolies – a clear-cut way of increasing your sales is to secure secondary spots and secondary locations. We’re talking, when you walk into the stores, what’s at the front of the stores?
The unfortunate thing for brands right now is that retailers are making this harder. It’s not that you can just put a 20-percent discount and get that position. You’ve really got to bring something that’s a way to excite the customers. I guess the competition is a tactic that’s used to meet the strategy of securing more space in-store.
When it comes to Tim and deciding to do the ambassadorship, 100 percent – they’re probably looking for a way to make that affinity stronger with the primary purchaser who would be women who was 29 to 49 which represent the majority of grocery buyers in Australia. They would be of an age that knows Tim. He probably has great social stats. He would have been vetted with his for and against chart. He offers some engagement opportunities and some extension opportunities.
You and I slightly differ in our opinions about this campaign. I think the competition is brilliant. I actually don’t know if the ambassadorship was necessary. What I love about the competition is that it brings back that essence of that genie from the early 1990’s where I want a packet of Tim Tams that never runs out. I don’t know if they needed a face to implement that.
Mia Fileman 15:34
I think they did. I think it was very clever because, obviously, it’s Tim Tams, and his name is Tim. He was wearing the genie vest, but he wasn’t wearing anything else. As you said, he obviously appeals to this target audience who are women and mums. He’s just had a baby, and he’s a family man, but he’s also a bit of a hunk. It ticked a lot of boxes.
At the same time that Arnott’s Tim Tams were running this campaign with Tim, Cadbury was running a golden ticket promotion, and they didn’t have Tim. It was stark – the difference. At that point of purchase that you talk about right at the front of the store, I was seeing the display. The Tim Tam display was emptying, and the Cadbury one was not.
Lauren Pickering 16:25
Well, there you go. Proof at your Coles or Woolies.
Mia Fileman 16:30
Correct. The sample size being one Coles in Newcastle. Definitely not the data that you need to rely on, but anecdotal, nonetheless.
Lauren Pickering 16:44
Yeah, he was a smart choice. If you went down the ambassador route, there’s no doubt that he is a smart choice, but doing an ambassador? People are becoming more savvy with ambassadorships. Collaborations, I would argue, are stronger. It would also have eaten into the profitability that that execution would have delivered.
I think that, if we go back to the very start of the episode where we talked about the definition of strategy being an informed opinion about how to win, what is missing from that definition for me is profitably. Your listeners would know more than anyone else how many small to medium businesses fail in that first year or two. I think that “profitably” needs to be given more weight which I think is sometimes driven by people jumping into tactics before they’ve got the strategy first.
Mia Fileman 17:43
That’s so good. Yeah, I completely agree. That’s a really, really good point. Tell my listeners, what should go into a strategy? What are some of the key components of a marketing strategy?
Lauren Pickering 17:58
I’ve mentioned the research phase. In that, you really need to understand your industry. You need to understand your competitors, your audience, and not just who they are but dig deeper into what motivates them, what their attitudes are, how they’re using things, what are their pain points. You also need to look at your offering in really great detail and compare that to your customers, what you found out about them, the competitors, and see if there’s something that you do better than anyone else that actually makes a difference to your customers.
That’s a big chunk of work. If you go further, you can then go into financial implications and all of the location-based stuff. If you’re e-commerce versus bricks and mortar, you need to look at that and the logistical side of things, but I would start with understanding your customer and your market and then your product.
Mia Fileman 19:00
Totally. I hear a lot of small business owners say, “Just don’t worry about what your competitors do. You do you, boo.” I really want to jump up and say, “Hang on. Please, hang on. We need to know what our competitors are doing, we need to understand the market that we operate in, and we need to understand what our point of difference is in relation to our competitors.”
Sure, you don’t need to be obsessed with them and follow their every move, but you need to understand what makes them special and, therefore, what makes you special, right?
Lauren Pickering 19:39
Absolutely. It’s about knowing but not dwelling on what your customers do.
You can’t change what they’re doing. You can only change what you’re doing and adapt to that, but by looking at what they’re doing and keeping a decent eye on any changes or shifts, you also can unlock some opportunities and some points of difference. For me right now, I’m going undercover and doing heaps of school tours and virtual open days of the schools in my area. Schools are not necessarily the most differentiated. It’s not the most differentiated category, but there’s been a lot of little “aha!” moments and I’m like, “Ah! That’s interesting! Yeah, you’re really focusing on that. Maybe we shouldn’t because you’re delivering it better than we ever could, so we’ll focus over here where we’ve got a competitive advantage.” That starts to sweep where your customers may be interested in.
Mia Fileman 20:41
Damn right.
The other thing that I think is really important to include in your marketing strategy is to quantify your audience because there’s a lot of talk about niching and not being all things to all people which is absolutely right, but I think we can niche too far and narrow our audience so much that it’s basically non-existent. It is so defined that there’s actually not enough customers for you to create a profitable business.
Lauren Pickering 21:20
Yeah, I agree with you. I’ve seen a number of customers go really, really laser-focused into who that absolute pinpoint customer can be. I would encourage the people who were going too far and not seeing success to take a little step back and see how they can broaden their customer definition and appeal to people without casting the net too wide.
This isn’t a great example, but it’s one that comes to mind – Airbnb. They’re huge, right? They don’t have a niche audience, but they also have ways and tactics and strategies – and I use those words together in this instance – to appeal to their different audience segments. Segmentation is a really interesting tool and can be part of your strategy.
In Airbnb’s most recent campaign, you saw them launch a suite of videos – one was all about your bromance boys going on a holiday with five lads, one was about a mum and daughter taking a trip to the beach, one was about a family trip. They’ve been able to keep their brand message and their promise consistent but tap into the different insights to different people. I guess what they all have in common are people who are looking for a getaway or a break.
Mia Fileman 22:48
Exactly. I think what you’re saying is that, while it’s really important to have a very well-defined customer segmentation about who is your heartland or your ideal customer, you also need to make sure that there is broader reach than just them. You can start with them but have the ability to build out.
If you are creating an online course just for service-based businesses in the accounting industry who are women and who have executive-level qualifications, that’s great. That’s really well-defined, but you need to go out there and quantify that that is a substantial enough audience to be able to service them long term and to be able to offer this course for years to come. Otherwise, you’re going to come up against the fact that you’ve actually tapped out that audience, right?
Lauren Pickering 23:49
100 percent. You’ve said that much more succinctly than I did.
Mia Fileman 23:54
Not at all.
Let’s talk about short-term very long-term because, as marketers, we must balance this need for short-term sales so that we can keep the lights on and also, in a corporate environment, to meet our budgets and keep our bosses happy. However, we must balance that with long-term brand building where the results don’t appear on the balance sheet next month. They can appear years down the track. This is probably the biggest challenge for marketers. How do you make sure that you meet your budget but also build really sustainable long-term brands like Barbie or like Maybelline? I’d love for you to talk to us about that.
Lauren Pickering 24:47
Yeah, I’ve got a lot to say about this.
Do you buy Bond’s products, Mia?
Mia Fileman 24:54
Of course.
Lauren Pickering 24:55
Do you buy Bond’s products at full price?
Mia Fileman 24:57
Never.
Lauren Pickering 24:58
Never. Why is that? Is that because they’re at 40-percent off probably every second month?
Mia Fileman 25:04
That’s the same with Witchery. I can’t shop there anymore because it’s always on 20 percent. I keep going in there and buying it at full price and then it goes on special and then I’m done. I’m just done with it for good.
Lauren Pickering 25:15
Look, it’s a danger to chase those short-term tactical sales. It started with one 40-percent off event years and years ago. Essentially, Bond’s maybe had a stronger sales manager than a marketing manager at the time, and that 40-percent off has grown into a twice-a-year event or a three-times-a-year event to a six-times-a-year event. You’re essentially eroding your branding. In my opinion, they have to cut it off to be able to build up any long-term brand equity again. That will be a big hit, and it’s going to hit that the business probably won’t want.
It’s something that I have to really fight hard about when I was the senior marketing manager at Mattel with one of my brands being Barbie. I was there in a really difficult time. Frozen launched. All of a sudden, every little girl wanted an Elsa doll – not a Barbie doll.
There were a lot of late nights, a lot of conference calls, a lot of analysis in “How do we get those immediate sales? How do we get people to choose Barbie instead of Elsa at this particular timeframe without going down the 20 percent, 40 percent, buy-one-get-one-free tactical element?” We did a little bit of that, but only to an extent, and that was really to make sure our stock on hand, our stocking store wasn’t building up and becoming a logistical nightmare, and also to hit some sales and market share targets, but my marketing team at the same time was focused in on what’s important for mums and daughters, what’s important in play, how does Barbie differ, what is Barbie’s point of opportunity for the future.
It ended up being that we honed in on what Frozen and Disney couldn’t be. Disney is great at those stories and the retelling of the movie, but Barbie allowed you to be open-ended in your play and reflects the culture of today. The long-term play was to focus in on Barbie reflecting culture, so you saw dolls that were ethnically diverse. You saw the introduction of wheelchair dolls. You saw a lot of positive PR which wasn’t part of Barbie’s DNA, really. Barbie cops a lot of flak in the media – generally because people are pro- or anti-Barbie – but all of a sudden, Barbie’s tackling a bigger purpose as part of the long-term brand play that meant that we didn’t have to play in those 40-percent-off battles all the time.
Short-term and long-term is critical. You can’t fall down the short-term track.
Mia Fileman 28:20
That is such great insight. You really repositioned Barbie from being the unachievable stereotype – the big boobs, the small waist, the hair, and the makeup – to making her much more inclusive, and that is going to set the Barbie brand up for long-term success. Really, with those price promotions, I think what you’re saying is that you want to do it enough so that you can make sure that everyone’s happy, but not enough that customers get used to it and rely on it and come to expect it because then they’ll never pay full price again.
Lauren Pickering 29:00
Absolutely.
Mia Fileman 29:05
I would love to hear from you what big brands do. Obviously, I’ve worked for some of them, but you have been in corporate for a lot longer than me. How do big brands go about marketing strategies and tactics? What does this actually look like behind the scenes? Because most of my audience are start-up founders and small business owners and are usually a marketing team of one. What can smaller brands learn from some of the bigger brands?
Lauren Pickering 29:36
I think your customers in small business have a disadvantage in that they don’t have the resources around them to be able to down tools and focus for a two- to four-week period on analysing your past and preparing for the future.
What I see small businesses doing more and more frequently is borrowing – I’m going to say “borrowing,” “stealing” is another word – ideas from other areas. If I see another pointing TikTok or Reel, I will scream. Just don’t do it.
What’s the lesson? Big brands are consistent. They don’t get distracted by shiny new things. They also really have a clear vision for their brand and a clear understanding of their brand. They don’t sway from that too often. That’s something that I think any business can do. It doesn’t take time. It just means that you sometimes have to say no to something that might excite you.
They say that you have to hear or see things 30 times to be able to digest it. I think the consistency of big business and also the understanding of this means that that drives some of big business success. I see small businesses, because you are invested in it, you are receiving it, hearing it, seeing it all the time, you probably are too quick to move on from the message because you would feel – quite rightly – that it’s old and oversaid and overdone. You are not allowed to move off this anti-guru campaign for at least another six months because you might be sick of it, but your audience won’t be.
Be consistent. Have that plan. Don’t get distracted. If you can dedicate a couple of hours a few times a week over the period of a month, get the core of your strategy down pat.
Mia Fileman 31:58
Totally. You’re so right.
Gurus – great example – the video has been watched 60,000 times. I’ve received countless messages, but it is only 60,000 times. There are so many more people in the world who have never seen it before. Even to this day. Today, someone contacted me saying, “I’ve just seen your video for the first time, and it’s great!” I’m like, “Cool!” I’ve been eating and breathing and sleeping this for the last four weeks, but every day, someone new is going to see it for the first time.
We, as brand custodians, tire of an idea well before our audience have probably even seen it for the first time, so that’s a really interesting point around 30. Traditionally, it was that Rule of Seven.
Lauren Pickering 32:46
No, that’s out because there’s so much. Social media changed the game on that, didn’t it?
Mia Fileman 32:52
Yeah.
Lauren Pickering 32:53
Traditionally, it was seven because that’s proportionate to the messages you’re seeing; 30 now because you can’t even scroll down any of your social media feeds without being bombarded anymore.
Mia Fileman 33:05
Totally.
Oh, my gosh. The dancing and pointing Reels. Don’t even get me started!
What’s the issue with it? Apart from the fact that it’s annoying, it’s just that it’s not going to lead anywhere. I have this skill, Lauren, where I can look at a social media post or a video, and I can go, “Holy moly! That’s going nowhere. That’s leading absolutely nowhere. There is no call to action. It’s not prompting me to save it so that I can keep this brand top of mind. It’s not prompting me to click on any links so that I can go to their website. It’s not prompting me to download anything. This is honestly content for the sake of content.”
It breaks my marketing heart that I saw someone say in a Facebook group a few weeks ago that they spent seven hours creating an Instagram Reel.
Lauren Pickering 34:06
Yeah, I don’t think that every social media post has to have a call to action or a click. There are legitimate brand building elements of social media. There are legitimate education or information or of interest piece. My issue with Instagram Reels – it’s none of what you were saying it is, but it’s none of the other either. It’s not entertaining. It’s not informative necessarily.
Maybe the first couple were great and entertaining, but now you’re the laggard. Let’s just not copy for the sake of copying. That’s a tactic where someone’s gone, “We can do this! Brainstorm a good idea,” but without sense checking, does it have a purpose?
Mia Fileman 34:52
Exactly. It might have worked for the first hundred people that did it, but now it’s actually content that you are going to scroll past.
But this example – the Instagram Reel with the lip-synching to the same track, to the same dance routine, and the same three concise little tips that they point to – actually really illustrates this entire conversation around strategy and tactics because it is so tactical, but there is no strategy that’s informed it. What did you want to achieve from this video?
I completely agree with you that a lot of my content is just about relationship-building and affinity, but that in itself is an objective. That is leading somewhere. That’s leading to people saying, “Hey, Mia, she’s a pretty cool chick.”
Lauren Pickering 35:46
Yeah, absolutely. That is my point – not everything has to have a call to action, but everything should have a purpose.
Mia Fileman 35:54
Totally.
Lauren Pickering 35:55
Look, if you’re anything like me, it’s exciting and fun to do brainstorms and to jump to the tactics, but you really have to sense check yourself because it can be lazy, it can be unoriginal, it can be damaging long term.
That said, I live as a marketer with a rule of thumb that you have to add value to your customer before you extract value. That’s where the purpose helps guide you.
Now, having said all of that, if you do have a tactical idea, especially as a small business owner, that makes sense and that has purpose, don’t sit on it because you don’t have a 20-page strategy that’s giving you permission. If you’ve ticked your boxes in terms of gut feel, makes sense for my brand, makes sense for the customer, is aligned to some sort of objective, there’s also plenty of examples how jumping into tactics with speed can help you win.
I would say strategy wins out more than jumping into tactics, but I also don’t want to have this message that people listening need to have a 20-page document before they do anything.
Mia Fileman 37:08
Totally. That is such great advice.
Likewise, if you have gone and spent some time doing a simple strategy that covers what you mentioned earlier which is just who are your people, how are we going to reach them, what are your competitors doing, and let’s do some research, then you can evaluate all the different ideas and tactics that you have based on that as your guiding beacon.
Then, you can go, “I’ve just had this wild idea. Before I jump two feet into it, let me just open up that document or roadmap that you were talking about, and let’s make sure that this appeals to my audience before I get too excited about ideas,” because, definitely, as small business, we can get that shiny object syndrome.
“I should totally be on Tiktok. I should absolutely be doing this. I should absolutely be doing that.” Does that make sense for your brand? I think that’s the real thing.
Lauren Pickering 38:06
Yeah, especially if you as a small business owner aren’t of a similar ilk to your target customer.
Mia, you’re a great example of a business owner that your customers actually have that similar ambition, have a similar desire for growth and to do something differently, but there are many examples of small business owners who live and breathe a completely different world. Your sense check is not their sense check.
Mia Fileman 38:34
Exactly. You are not always your customer. That’s really, really important.
Lauren Pickering 38:41
That’s another thing that I would say that big business does better because there are more people involved in putting together strategies and the implementation plan.
Mia Fileman 38:57
Sure. I just want to say that there are some benefits having been on both sides.
I spent ten years in corporate for really, really big brands – like Maybelline and Kraft and Bic. I’ve now spent ten years as a small business owner. There are some real advantages for small businesses that I don’t feel that they’re capitalising on enough.
Lauren Pickering 39:20
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 39:23
When we worked at Maybelline, we spent around four to six hours a day in meetings.
Lauren Pickering 39:30
Yeah, there’s plenty small businesses have the one-up on big business. Speed and agility are some of those things. You don’t have too many cooks in the kitchen. While I said it was an advantage for big business before, that’s more in the planning and strategy stage. In the implementation stage, small businesses have so many less cooks in the kitchen. They don’t have the red tape, the multiple approval layers. You can do something immediately. You also don’t have as many resources to use, so you have an advantage in terms of prioritising.
Mia, you and I have both managed marketing budgets of 30-plus million dollars. I now have a budget of a few hundred thousand. You have less – much less than that. My budget is still significant. Don’t get me wrong because it’s still a significant-sized business, but my budget’s effectiveness is far better right now than it was when I had those 30 million dollars because, when you have less to work with, you make sure that you are smarter with it. You prioritise harder. You scrutinise it harder. I think small businesses can really bat above their average when they prioritise budget well.
Mia Fileman 41:02
Totally.
Lauren Pickering 41:02
I think the last advantage is authenticity.
As small businesses, you have the one-up on authenticity, especially in a world where people are much savvier than they were back in the Mad Men heyday. You’ve got the advantage there of being authentic and not having that agenda so obvious.
Mia Fileman 41:24
Totally. You can be scrappier, you can take much more creative risks, and you give a shit more because this is your brand, your livelihood, your lifestyle that is all wrapped up in the success of your business as opposed to getting up and going to work every day and marketing somebody else’s brand and they just so happen to be the biggest cosmetics brand in the world, so whatever!
Amazing. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today, Lauren. Any final takeaways or thoughts for our small business champions?
Lauren Pickering 42:02
All right. I’ll leave you with one thing, Mia. What is my favourite saying when it comes to strategies?
Mia Fileman 42:07
I quote this all the time!
“Strategy is about choices.”
Lauren Pickering 42:12
That’s it. Hopefully, you will make more good choices than bad. Good luck!
Mia Fileman 42:19
Amazing! Thank you so much, Lauren!
Thank you!
You listened right up until the end, so why not press that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling? You can also connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I’m super friendly.
