Mass Marketing Doesn't Work. Do This Instead
Ask a tradesperson who their ideal customer is and you may well hear "anyone who'll pay". As a policy for taking work, that's fine. As a plan for spending money to find work, it's how a small budget disappears.
Mass marketing means one message sent as widely as you can afford, in the hope that the right people are somewhere in the crowd. It does work for some businesses. Here is why it rarely works for a trade or a small service firm, and what to do with the money instead.
The short version
- Mass marketing suits brands whose buyers are nearly everyone. The research behind it says brands grow mainly by winning more of the people who buy their category.
- A trade's buyers are the households and firms within reach of the van who need a particular job. Paying to reach anyone else buys you nothing.
- Three in four UK private sector businesses had no staff beyond their owners at the start of 2025 (Department for Business and Trade). You can't outspend national advertisers, so don't try.
- Pick one customer you can name, one job you want more of and one patch you can serve. Then make it easy for those people to find you.
- By default, Google Ads also shows your adverts to people elsewhere who have shown interest in your area. Decide whether you want that.
Does mass marketing work at all?
Yes, for the businesses it suits. Research on how brands grow says they grow mainly by winning more of the people who buy their category. For a national brand, whose buyers are nearly everyone, that means advertising broadly. The mistake is copying the method without the budget, or the market, that makes it work.
The case is set out in Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow (Oxford University Press, 2010). A summary on the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's site puts the core finding plainly: "brands mainly grow through penetration". In plain terms, they grow mostly by winning more buyers. The summary says nothing about local or very small firms.
For a chocolate bar, almost anyone is a possible buyer, so reaching everyone is reaching buyers. For a plumber in Bolton, the category buyers are the homes and businesses within reach of the van that need a plumber this month. Applied to a trade, the same idea says reach all of them. That is targeting, done thoroughly.
| Mass marketing | Targeted marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees it | Anyone in a wide area or audience | People you can serve, who need your kind of job |
| What you pay for | Everyone reached, whether they could hire you or not | Mostly people who could hire you |
| What it says | Something general enough to suit everyone | One problem and one result, in the customer's words |
| Who it suits | National brands most people buy from | Trades and local service firms |
| What goes wrong | The money runs out before anyone remembers you | The niche is too small to keep you busy |
Why does broadcasting cost a small business more?
Because you pay for every person you reach, and most of them can never hire you. A national brand can carry that waste, since nearly everyone it reaches might buy. For a firm with one van, everyone outside the patch, or who will never need the job you do, is money gone.
The numbers are lopsided. At the start of 2025, three in four of the UK's 5.7 million private sector businesses had no staff beyond their owners, according to the Department for Business and Trade's 2025 business population estimates. Only 8,335 had 250 or more employees. Construction alone had 885,000 small and medium-sized firms, more than any other sector, so a trade is one voice among many. Advertise where the big firms do and you're bidding against their budgets.
Online, broad is the default. Unless you change it, Google Ads location targeting reaches people in or regularly in your area, plus people elsewhere who have shown interest in it. Google recommends that setting, but says to consider "Presence" if you only want people in your locations. The wider net can catch a landlord in another city with a flat in your patch. It can also pay for clicks from people who will never book a job there.
A vague advert can cost more per click, too. Google's ad quality page says "higher quality ads typically cost less per click than lower quality ads", and ad relevance is one of the three things its Quality Score tool tells you to work on. An advert written for one kind of customer is easier to make relevant than one written for everybody.
What should you do instead of mass marketing?
Name one customer, one job and one patch, write an offer that customer would recognise as theirs, and put it where they already look. For a local trade, start with your Google Business Profile and your website, before any paid channel. Spend on adverts only when you can aim them at the same narrow group.
Name the customer
Start with one customer you can name. For a cleaning firm, that might be offices within a few miles of the unit. "Anyone who needs a clean" is not a customer you can name. Once you've chosen, you know who to approach, what proof to collect and where the marketing money goes.
A niche doesn't mean turning other work away. You still take the job that rings in. The niche decides who your marketing is written for, clearly enough that they recognise themselves in it.
Write the offer for that person
Answer four questions. Who gets the most from what you do? What urgent problem do they have? What result do they want? What will you promise? Then put the answers in one sentence.
Say a heating engineer picks letting agents. By law, landlords must have each gas appliance and flue they provide safety-checked every year, as the Health and Safety Executive explains, so the work comes round again. The offer might be: "Landlord gas safety checks booked within the week, keys collected from your office, record emailed to you and the tenant." An agent can say yes to that.
Be findable where they look
When your chosen customer looks you up, your Google profile and website should both say who you're for. Your primary category should still describe what the business is, so add the job you want more of to your profile's services and lead with it on your website. Name the customer in the first lines of your homepage. Keep the service area honest, too: Google's service area guidance says your overall area shouldn't stretch beyond about two hours' driving from where you're based.
Pay only to reach the same people
Your Google profile costs time rather than money, unlike paying a lead platform to reach everyone on your behalf. If you're still deciding whether to pay for adverts at all, compare local SEO with paid ads first. When you do pay, aim at the same narrow group. On Google Ads, use keywords that name the job rather than the whole trade, write the advert for the person you picked, and set the location option on purpose.
When does reaching everyone make sense?
When reaching one more person costs you nothing, or when nearly everyone in your patch is a possible customer. Signwriting on the van and a board outside a job are seen by everyone who passes, at no extra cost once paid for. Paying to broadcast beyond your patch can wait until your niche is full, if it ever is.
What to do this week
- Write one sentence naming the customer, the job and the patch you want more of.
- Read the first screen of your homepage as a stranger would. If it doesn't say who it's for, rewrite the opening line.
- Add that job to your Google Business Profile services, under a primary category that says what you are.
- If you run Google Ads, open the location options and choose between "Presence" and "Presence or interest" on purpose.
- Ring three of your best recent customers and ask why they picked you. Use their words in your offer.
- List last month's marketing spend that reached people you could never serve. Pause one item for a month and watch the phone.