#ShopSmall For Your Marketing Needs. Here’s Why.

What you can get with David that you just can’t with Goliath

Image sourced from Canva Pro

During the pandemic, #ShopSmall became a trendy tagline across the social media metaverse. Its ethos is clear: support small businesses because they’re awesome. But why are they awesome, especially in a time when mega-corporate monsters lurk around every corner of every industry? There are many reasons, but the one that encompasses them all is the personal touch. Do you think you’ll get the same personal touch from Amazon as you’ll get from your local retailer? Probably not. This is especially true with marketing services, where the products consist of varying scales of human interaction and understanding. Here are 3 major feelings of that personal touch you’ll get when applying #ShopSmall to your marketing projects that you might not get from a big agency:

Care

Who do you think is going to care more — like actually genuinely honestly care — about the success of your project: the Account Manager with a handful of commodified accounts in their 9–5 portfolio, or the freelancer who relies on the 4 clients they work with to buy groceries every month? I’m not saying that staffers at big agencies don’t care. I would say in general that marketers care a lot about their work because many of us have creative or artistic propensities that got us into this madness in the first place. But when push comes to shove, if the agency loses the client that that Account Manager is working with, they’ll just assign a new one. If the freelancer loses the business, well, it’s personal. And not fraying the “it’s not personal it’s just business” dynamic, all I’m saying is that it has more repercussions and ripple effects than in the traditional agency setting. Contractually, both care. Emotionally, the small shop cares more.

Concern

And since the small shop cares more, they also put more genuine concern into their work and partnership. They are more willing to color outside the lines of their scope a bit if it means getting the job done in the best way possible, while big agencies typically villanize the dreaded scope-creeping clients. Need something done after hours? Chances are that freelancers or small teams don’t hold a traditional 9–5 work schedule anyway…