Michele Palmer ran marketing campaigns for Marriott and the Ritz Carlton. Her approach to small business marketing: champagne and caviar results on a Coke and Cheerios budget. In this episode, she makes a specific case that most small business owners are spending hours on social media that isn’t doing anything — and she’s direct about what to do instead.
This is a practical episode. Michele doesn’t deal in theory.
Most small business social media is wasted effort
Michele’s opening point is blunt: most small business owners don’t actually know who their customer is. They can describe a demographic — female, 35–55, interested in wellness — but they can’t describe what she’s thinking about at 11pm when she’s scrolling. That gap is where most social media goes wrong.
The first question every business owner gets wrong: who is your customer? Not their age bracket. Not their income range. Their actual motivation. What are they trying to solve? What do they believe about themselves? Until you’ve answered that, every post you write is aimed at nobody in particular.
The free SEO most businesses skip
Michele points to Google Business Listings as one of the highest-return marketing moves available to small businesses — and consistently one of the most skipped.
A complete, active profile takes ten minutes to set up properly. Most businesses have either left it half-finished or haven’t touched it since they created it — outdated hours, no photos, no posts. Google is actively surfacing these listings in local search results. It’s free real estate that most businesses are leaving empty.
Her principle: fix the free things first before spending money on the complex ones. There are a lot of business owners paying for ads before they’ve closed the obvious gaps.
How to use AI without sounding like AI
Michele has a practical framework for AI in content creation: use it to draft, structure, and generate options, then rewrite in your own voice — the language you’d actually use in a conversation with a real client.
The tell is specific. AI writes for the concept. You write for the person. A real customer doesn’t think in target demographics and content pillars. They think about what they’re worried about this week. When the gap between AI output and a real human voice is obvious, it’s usually because nobody did the editing pass.
Her process treats AI output as a first draft — never the final one.
What Marriott taught about launching anything
Running campaigns at the Marriott and Ritz Carlton level means consistent customer experience across thousands of touchpoints, with thin margins for error. What Michele took into small business work: you don’t scale until you’ve tested with one real person first.
The design lab approach isn’t about perfection before launch. It’s about closing the loop with a real customer before building for scale. Watch what one person does with the thing. Fix what doesn’t work. Then grow it.
For business owners waiting until everything is ready: the loop runs faster if you close it earlier.
The Stanley pivot — from tradies to school mums
Stanley built their brand selling to tradespeople. Contractors, construction workers, outdoors workers. Durable gear, built to last.
Then the Quencher caught a completely different market — school run mums — and built a billion-dollar category. The product wasn’t redesigned. The positioning shifted to a customer who cared about something different: keeping their drink cold through a full day, in a cup that fits in a car holder.
Michele’s point: when you understand what a customer actually needs — not just what they say they want — the product can move into spaces the brand didn’t predict. Understanding the motivation is the work.
Getting past imposter syndrome
Michele is direct: perfectionism is usually avoidance. When a business owner says they’re not ready to post, not ready to pitch, not ready to put themselves out there — the question worth asking is whether “not ready” is accurate or whether it’s a permission problem dressed up as a preparation problem.
Her practical suggestion for this week if you’re stalled: pick one platform you’re already on, find a post from a competitor that got genuine engagement, and write your version of it in your own voice. Not a copy. Your take on the same territory. Then post it.
The first one is always the hardest. Most people never post it.
About Michele Palmer
Michele Palmer is the founder of Wake Robin Marketing. She spent decades running marketing for major hospitality brands including Marriott and Ritz Carlton, and now works with small business owners to apply those principles on a fraction of the budget.
Website: wakerobinmarketing.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michelepalmer
Want to be a guest on The Jo Show?
If you’re a business owner with a story worth sharing, Jo would love to hear from you.
Apply to be a guest here.
