Are You Making It Too Hard to Buy From You? Small Business Marketing Tips
You’ve got someone interested in your business. They’ve found your website, read your content, looked at your services and decided they want to know more. So what happens next?
If the answer involves hunting around for a phone number, filling in a lengthy form, waiting days for a response or trying to work out what happens next, you could be making it harder than it needs to be.
This is something small businesses often overlook. We spend so much time thinking about how to attract customers that we forget to think about what happens when someone actually wants to buy from us.
The SME customer journey starts before the sale
Marketing isn't just about getting someone to notice your business. It's about helping them move from “I've never heard of you” to “I think you can help me” and eventually to “I'd like to work with you.” Every step in that journey matters.
Imagine someone has seen one of your LinkedIn posts and clicks through to your website. They like what they see and want to make an enquiry. Can they immediately find out how to contact you, or do they have to search through your website? Perhaps they find a contact form, but it asks for their company name, job title, phone number, address, budget, timescale and a detailed description of what they're looking for. They might complete it. They might also think, “I'll come back to this later.”
And later never comes.
Don't make people work for the information
One of the simplest tests you can do is to look at your business through the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. Can they quickly work out what you offer, whether it's right for them, how to contact you and what will happen when they do?
If any of those answers are unclear, there's an opportunity to make the customer journey easier.
This doesn't mean you need to completely redesign your website or introduce a complicated sales funnel. Sometimes the fix is incredibly simple: make your contact details easier to find, change “Submit” to “Request a quote”, add a sentence explaining what happens after someone fills in the form, tell people when they'll hear from you or give them an alternative way to get in touch.
Small changes can remove surprisingly big barriers.
What happens after someone enquires?
It's also worth looking at what happens once someone actually gets in touch. How quickly do you respond? Is the response personal or automated? Do you acknowledge their enquiry and explain what happens next? Do you make them feel like you've actually listened to what they need?
And perhaps most importantly, do you follow up if they don't respond?
A potential customer might be genuinely interested but busy. They might need to speak to someone internally, compare a few options or simply have forgotten. Not following up doesn't necessarily mean they're not interested. It might just mean they're human.
Small business red flags: are you making it harder than it needs to be?
Sometimes the problem isn't that your marketing isn't working. It's that you're creating little barriers once someone becomes interested.
Here are some of the red flags I'd look out for:
🚩 Your phone number is hidden on the Contact page. If someone wants to speak to you, don't make them hunt for your number. If you're happy to receive calls, make it easy for people to find out how to contact you.
🚩 Your main call to action is “Learn More”. Learn more about what? And then what? Your calls to action should help people understand what their next step is. “Request a quote”, “Book a consultation” or “Make an enquiry” is much clearer.
🚩 Your enquiry form feels like an application form. Do you really need someone's full address, job title, budget, company size, phone number and a detailed description before you'll even speak to them? Every additional field creates another opportunity for someone to abandon the form. Ask for what you genuinely need at that stage and leave the rest for the conversation.
🚩 Nobody knows how quickly enquiries are answered. If someone is considering contacting you, they're making a small commitment. Reassure them. Something as simple as “We'll respond within one working day” can remove a lot of uncertainty.
🚩 Your automated response says little more than “Thanks for getting in touch.” What happens next? Who will contact them? When can they expect to hear from you? Is there anything they need to prepare? Your automated response doesn't need to be complicated, but it should be useful.
🚩 You don't follow up unless the customer comes back to you. Silence isn't necessarily rejection. People get busy, emails get buried and decisions take time. If someone has already shown an interest in your business, don't make them do all the work of starting the conversation again.
🚩 Your website doesn't explain what happens next. People don't just want to know what you sell. They want to know what buying from you actually looks like. Do they have a call? Do you provide a quote? Is there a consultation? How long does it take? A little information can make taking that first step feel much easier.
🚩 Your social media sends people somewhere with no obvious next step. Someone sees a post, becomes interested and clicks through. Then what? If your social media is generating attention but your website gives them nowhere obvious to go, you're potentially losing people you've already worked hard to attract.
🚩 You're making people ask for information that could easily be on your website. If customers regularly ask the same questions about your services, pricing, process, availability or what happens next, that's a clue. Maybe that information needs to be easier to find.
🚩 You've never actually tested the customer journey yourself. This might be the biggest red flag of all. You know your business too well. You know exactly where to click and what everything means. Your customers don't have that advantage.
Try doing it as if you're a completely new customer. Search for your business. Visit your website. Find a service. Look for the information you'd need. Try to make an enquiry.
And don't give yourself any shortcuts.
If you find yourself thinking “Where do I go now?”, “Why do they need that?” or “I can't find what I'm looking for”, pay attention.
Those moments are telling you something.
The good news? You probably don't need to fix everything.
You don't need a new website, an expensive CRM or a complicated sales funnel to improve your customer journey.
You might simply need to move your phone number. Rewrite a button. Remove three unnecessary form fields. Update an automated email. Add a sentence explaining what happens next. Or finally create a follow-up process for enquiries that go quiet.
The aim isn't to make buying complicated. It's to remove the unnecessary complications that are already there.
Small business marketing tip #1 : Try being your own customer
Here's your health check for this month: pretend you've never dealt with your business before.
Start where a potential customer might start. Search for your business online, visit your website and try to find the information you'd need. Then try to make an enquiry. Don't use any shortcuts and don't rely on information you already have in your head.
Pay attention to every point where you have to stop and think, “Where do I go now?” How long does it take to find what you need and make contact? Is anything confusing, frustrating or unnecessarily complicated?
You could even ask someone outside your business to do the same exercise. Their experience may be much more revealing because they don't have all the knowledge you have.
Small business marketing tip #2 : Your practical checklist
Rather than simply asking yourself whether your customer journey works, work through this small business checklist and tick each one that you can confidently answer yes to:
☐ I can find my contact details within 5 seconds. Try it on your website. Don't rely on your phone number being hidden on the Contact page.
☐ It is obvious what I should do if I want to buy or enquire. There should be a clear next step, rather than leaving people to work it out for themselves.
☐ My calls to action are clear. “Find out more”, “Get a quote”, “Book a consultation” or “Make an enquiry” tells someone what happens next. “Click here” doesn't.
☐ My enquiry form only asks for information I actually need. If you don't need it to respond to the enquiry, consider removing it.
☐ I explain what happens after someone contacts me. For example: “We'll get back to you within one working day” or “We'll arrange a 20-minute call to discuss what you need.”
☐ I've tested my website on my phone.Can you find your contact details, understand what you offer and make an enquiry easily without having to zoom, scroll endlessly or fight with a badly behaved menu?
☐ I've checked that my social media profiles make it easy to take the next step.If someone discovers you on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram, can they easily find your website, contact details or booking/enquiry information?
☐ My response process is quick and straightforward. Think about what happens from the moment an enquiry arrives to the moment someone receives a response.
☐ I have a follow-up process. If someone enquires and then goes quiet, do you have a reason to get back in touch rather than simply assuming they've changed their mind?
☐ I've tested the process myself. Actually go through the journey from start to finish rather than assuming it works because you've never had a problem with it.
☐ I've asked someone outside the business to test it. A fresh pair of eyes will often spot things you've become completely blind to.
If you've ticked every box, brilliant. If you've left a few unticked, don't see that as a problem — you've just identified some relatively easy opportunities to improve your customer journey.
And that's really the point of a marketing health check. You don't always need to do more marketing. Sometimes you need to make the marketing you're already doing work harder.
Getting people to your website, social media or inbox is only half the job. Once you've got their attention, make it easy for them to take the next step.
Your customers shouldn't have to work hard to give you their business.
If you found this useful, feel free to forward it to another small business owner who might find it helpful too.
JB Marketing & Communications — practical marketing support for businesses that want their marketing to actually work.
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