Your Values Are Your Voice: Marketing a Small Business With Heart
As a small business owner, your core values aren't just words on an "About Us" web page — they're your competitive advantage.
While larger companies might struggle to appear authentic, your small business can naturally showcase its values in ways that resonate with customers. Here's how to turn your principles into powerful marketing messages without breaking the bank.
Start Where You Are
You don't need a massive marketing budget to communicate your values effectively. Start with what you already have:
Daily customer interactions
Your unique storefront or office space
Social media presence
Employee relationships
These touchpoints are perfect opportunities to demonstrate what your business stands for, and can be translated into content for websites, sales collateral, blog posts, email newsletters and other materials.
Tell Your Story
Small businesses have an advantage in storytelling — your background and history are personal and relatable, especially to customers seeking local alternatives to large, national retailers and service providers. Examples of starting points include:
Why you started your business
How you've helped specific customers
Your involvement in local events
Behind-the-scenes glimpses of daily operations
This process tends to create momentum: Tell your story once, and it provides valuable content that can be repurposed for a variety of uses moving forward. In many cases, you'll also see real-time feedback about which messages resonate the most with customers and result in more sales, website visits and other important measurables.
Choose Marketing Channels That Make Sense
Focus your efforts where they'll have the most impact:
Local social media groups and community pages
Neighborhood events and festivals
Partnerships with other local businesses
Word-of-mouth referral programs
Remember, it's better to do a few channels well than spread yourself too thin.
Keep Your Words and Visuals Consistent
Creating a brand presence that reflects your values takes discipline and attention to detail — but some basic consistency goes a long way. Every business benefits from creating a brand toolkit, which includes not only its logo, but other important resources that empower your team to create marketing that drives results while maintaining its spirit and purpose:
Explore colors and typefaces to match your company's personality
Choose a tone for communications — and stick to it
Share photos of real team members and customers
Keep messaging focused on your key values
Create Community-Focused Campaigns
By seeking out like-minded local organizations and marketing opportunities, your values can be brought to life in new and unexpected ways. In some cases, it may also result in valuable media coverage that reaches new markets and customers:
Partner with local charities that align with your mission
Create customer appreciation events
Launch loyalty programs that reward shared values
Participate in community improvement projects
Involve Your Team
As a small business, your team is family — in many cases literally, as 27% of small businesses in the United States are family-owned. Use this to your advantage! Building upon your internal company culture often provides a natural, authentic pipeline for creating values-focused marketing content:
Share customer compliments with staff
Feature employee stories in your marketing
Let team members contribute to social media
Recognize staff who exemplify your values
Remember, your values are your marketing superpower. While larger competitors might struggle to seem genuine, your authentic commitment to your principles can create lasting connections with customers who share your values. The key is to let your natural personality shine through in every marketing project.
The best part? Many of these strategies cost little to nothing to implement. They simply require consistency, authenticity and a genuine commitment to living your values every day.
Start small, stay true to your principles, and watch your community of loyal customers grow!
About Me
I’m a freelance partner for small business, higher education and nonprofits with more than 20 years of award-winning experience in marketing, writing, design and strategy. Proud graduate of The University of Toledo and Michigan State University.