How to build a business image with no marketing budget

A good image for a small business does not start with a budget. It starts with integrity, with what people say to each other about you, and with work that genuinely helps the customer, and none of those costs much. What costs a great deal is neglecting it.

Image, in plain words, is what people think about your business before they have ever spoken to you. Most small owners assume it is a matter of logos, websites and adverts, so they put it off until there is money. The source suggests a different order.

A poor image costs money, even when you cannot see it

The source opens with the price, because the price is what sorts out the priorities. In its account, a poor public image can cost an organisation a huge share of its income, and squeeze its pay and its facilities along with it.

It also explains how that happens. When someone important walks into your business and finds a mess, and feels that they and what they asked for are being ignored, you do not only lose their payment. You also lose the influential friends who would have stood up for you.

So every such moment carries two losses: the customer, and everyone that customer would have sent your way.

Suppose a customer arrives at a chaotic office and is given excellent service there. They come back themselves, but they never recommend the place to anybody. The work was good, and the image cost the business the referral.

And the other way round, suppose an owner swaps his voicemail for a clear recorded message. That small change brings in enquiries that simply were not arriving before.

First the income, then the full image

Here the source says something that reads as if it were aimed at a one-person business. Building an impressive image is easy when you have millions to spend. The real skill is building it without spending more than you can afford.

And straight after that, it sets the order: “One has to make the money before one makes the full image.”

That is not permission to wait, though. The source adds that there is plenty you can do for nothing or for very little, and that you have to do it. So there are two rules in the same breath: do not wait, and do not pour money into branding before there is income to justify it.

Suppose a tradesman who sinks a month's takings into a logo before he has ten customers. The logo brings him none of them.

Now take the same tradesman in the reverse order. He answers enquiries within the hour, sends a confirmation message after every booking, and leaves the place clean when each job is done. It costs nothing, and the image starts building.

Or a practitioner who publishes clear hours for answering and then sticks to them. She stops losing enquiries, without spending a penny.

The three things that build an image for free

The source names three things that stand above everything else, in a fixed order. First comes integrity. Second comes word of mouth, which simply means what people say to one another about you. Third comes a product that people can actually use and that does them good.

The source spends the most time on the second. In its view, word of mouth is a better line of communication than the press, radio, television or even an important person, and all of those channels are really trying to produce it.

Elsewhere it explains why: “people tend to believe their friends. They are sceptical of advertising.” Someone who hears from a friend that a thing worked for them assumes it will work for them too.

Suppose an owner who gets most of his customers through recommendations. His entire advertising budget is really trying to buy what is already happening for him at no cost.

And if you ask each new customer how they found you, there is a good chance you will hear the name of a person, not the name of an advert.

My work speaks for itself is not enough

The source sorts the whole subject into three grades. The perfect grade is good deeds that are well publicised. The grade called not enough is good deeds left to speak for themselves. The hostile grade is bad deeds publicised with lies.

The middle grade is the one most owners recognise. The line my work speaks for itself sounds like modesty, but the source puts it squarely in the not enough grade. Good work that no one knows about does nothing for you.

Suppose an excellent fitter whom nobody has heard of. He has a string of happy customers and no presence whatsoever beyond them.

Now suppose the same fitter starts taking before and after photos and sending them to each customer. The customers pass the pictures on, and the good work finally starts reaching people who were not there to see it.

As far as the result goes, being too shy to talk about your work and staying in the not enough grade come to exactly the same thing.

The booklet gives this chapter two exercises, one to check and one to spot it, followed by a self-check. The booklet as a whole is about who exactly you are talking to and how to find out what they want to hear, and this is one of its ten chapters.

An image does not wait for a budget. It gets built every time you answer, confirm, clean up after yourself and give a customer a reason to talk about you.