Dear Trini Business: Your Social Media Is Not Your Marketing Strategy

You wouldn’t build a house without a houseplan would you?  Don’t answer that if you are a Trini, as the answer might be yes! Even if you use the best materials and tools, without a plan, you can imagine the result. Now apply that concept to building your business.

The houseplan is to a house is as a marketing plan to a business. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (for you Gen X’ers) or playing on loop (for Millennials and Gen Z’s), the application of marketing as practiced by the big brands is absolutely critical for the even the smallest of business these days, no joke, or as Trinis say, it ain’t funny.

We hear it from clients regularly. They are posting consistently. They are using the right platforms. Some are paying for boosts, hiring content creators, trying reels, experimenting with AI-generated images and video. They are doing everything they think they have to do. And they are not seeing the results they expected.

The conversation that follows usually goes in a predictable direction. They blame the algorithm. They blame the economy (who’s fault Kamla, Rowley, or both?). They wonder whether they need to spend more, post more, change platforms, or kill a chicken in the cemetery (look it up Gen Z). What almost never comes up, because nobody has pointed it out, or they refuse to see, is that the problem has nothing to do with any of those things.

The tools are working exactly as designed. The problem is that there was no strategy for them to execute— no houseplan: you just up and busy building the rooms following an idea in your head, instead of a plan prepared in advance on paper, and then surprised that the results are a hodge-podge, loosely-connected structure that doesn’t have the finished, polished look, you know— looking like something the government built.

Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp Business, AI content tools, are all mechanisms of delivery. They are extraordinarily powerful mechanisms, and understanding how to use them is genuinely valuable. But they are still just hammers, or like every other building tool.

The sequence most businesses follow is: acquire the tools, then figure out what to do with them. We got busy figuring out how to use Meta Business Suite, schedule posts, run ads, create reels and everything. But the correct sequence is: establish the foundation, then select the tools that serve it. Posting without a clear framework is not marketing. It is activity. And activity without direction is the reason so many T&T businesses are generating content but not generating growth. You just busy, building up a sweat looking like you working hard.

This is not an abstract or academic observation. It is the most consistent pattern we Trinis bawl about for our underperforming social media: the business went straight to the platform without answering the questions that the platform was supposed to help communicate.

Now, please appreciate that marketing is a complete profession obtained from years of tertiary level study— which you didn’t do, and have no plans to do. But you’re going to draw and apply its core concepts; a crash course is better than no course (of course!).  A marketing framework does not necessarily require a consultant or a formal document. It requires honest answers to five questions that most businesses have never sat down and worked through.

Not “everyone.” Not “anyone who needs what I sell.” A specific, describable person with specific characteristics, habits, income levels, frustrations and aspirations— a real Trini you can picture, you know, like a teller in the bank, a dental assistant, a store manager, a store clerk, a teacher, a nurse, a wackerman. The business that is marketing to every Tom, Dick, and Harrilal, is connecting with no one.

Let’s use a real example using two of Forward Multimedia clients. Signature Selection in Macoya , and City Furniture both sell home furniture and accessories. Living room sets at Signature Selection are imported and retail from $12,000 TTD up to as much as $20,000 TTD. At City Furniture, they manufacture locally and you can buy sets for as low as $3,000 TTD.

Those who know them know that Signature Selection sells high-end furniture, mainly to upper-mid, upper, and affluent market. The upper mid market, is still working-class, but may have their own cars, and may not outright buy $20K bedroom sets or furnish multiple rooms at a time like the affluent, but may treat themselves to fine pieces occasionally.

City Furniture’s market are the lower to mid-range market, more ‘working’ working-class customers with limited disposable income, so have to watch a dollar more; they most likely use buses and taxis to get around.

Even if you don’t know these two stores, can easily figure out their primary markets just by looking at their store and they way they market.

Knowing your customer generally in your head and having it clearly defined in writing makes a difference. It provides clarity for strategy development, and a a basis for drilling down into more detailed customer personas, for example, families with children— promote smaller beds, study desks, reading lamps, etc. Get the picture?

Not the product or service itself: the underlying problem. A hardware store does not sell red bricks and concrete blocks. It helps people fix, build and maintain the things that matter to them. A web agency like Forward Multimedia does not build websites. We build the part of a business that works while the owner sleeps.

How often do T&T hardwares promote the business as a partner to your building projects like say, how The Home Depot or Lowe’s does? More than 90% of the time they promote products.

When a business understands what it actually solves, it stops talking about its products at every turn and and starts talking to its customers.

That’s not to say that promoting products 90% of the time is wrong— on the contrary, if you see it working for you, then of course sell, sell, sell! However, such is most likely working for a small percentage of businesses, and also most likely, they’ve built their brand to a level that they can do mainly selling.

This is positioning. And most T&T businesses don’t have a real answer. Price is not a position. Price is the last argument of a business that has not established any other reason for the customer to prefer them. A business with a clear position, built on expertise, trust, service quality, specialization or personality, does not compete on price because its customers are not shopping on price.

Using the hardware again, an example of positioning can be the way staff offers advice for your building project. They might give a good tip on the better cutting discs, or be knowledgeable on the advantages of one brand or water pump over the other, instead of just selling you what you ask for. Their yard-men may help you tie your load securely, or stop traffic when you back out. And these can make the difference for you preferring to go there instead of the hardware up the road.

Consistency of voice is how a brand becomes familiar. Familiar becomes trusted. Trusted becomes the default choice. A business that speaks in five different tones across five months of content has not built familiarity— it has created noise.

So ensure that you don’t use conflicting communication styles across your channels, for example, loud and bubbly on social media, but uptight and stuffy on your website and and customer emails.

This may sound simple, but these elements go unnoticed because they are woven in so naturally. It’s like going into a well-lit building, and there many signs indicating directions, offices etc. Or like driving on the road with signs telling you the towns and exits for the next few miles, street names, etc. You only notice when it’s not there, and which is very common in T&T as you know.

Most businesses communicate as though every person who sees a post is ready to buy. Most of them are not; they are like the Trinis who say: ‘ah go pass back…’

Some are encountering the brand for the first time. Some are comparing options. Some are ready to act.

The content should speak to all three groups, not just the last one. Posting exclusively promotional content addresses the smallest group and alienates the larger ones.

Trinis really do a lot of online research these days. Most businesses have instinctive answers to these questions. The problem is that the answers are not written down, not agreed upon, not consistent and not driving the decisions being made about what to post each week. That is the gap between activity and strategy.

Branding, marketing and advertising are three distinct things that are almost universally treated as one and T&T is no different. Understanding the difference is not a technicality, it changes how every dollar and every hour gets spent— or should change now that you’re learning it.

Your identity. It is what people think and feel when they encounter a business, whether through a social media post, a conversation with an employee, the design of a storefront or the experience of buying something. It is built deliberately over time, and it exists in the minds of the audience, not in a logo file.

For example, is there a difference when you hear Massy Stores and Persad’s D Food King? What do you think about when you hear Rattan’s? Or Pennywise?

Branding is primary aspect that Forward Multimedia has been emphasizing lately as we’re seeing that clients do not have a clear idea of their brand even when pressed. Not that the brand hasn’t been built or generally known, but it’s in the honing in and focusing on the brand the way international brands do, that will provide a greater foundation to market effectively in T&T.

Paid amplification. It accelerates the reach of a message that already exists. A strong message, amplified, generates results. A weak or undefined message, amplified, generates reach without conversion. This is why businesses boost posts and feel nothing happened— the money expanded the audience, i.e. reaching thousands more than what would have been achieved organically, but little sales to show for it. The message was not clear enough to move anyone.

The businesses struggling most right now are the ones who skipped to advertising without completing the branding and marketing work that makes advertising function. The money was not wasted on the platform. It was spent reaching an audience that was never properly spoken to.

When Trini businesses do a sponsored post, the business gets seen by many people for the first time. For argument’s sake, let’s say the post is compelling, it won’t automatically convert for them to shout “ah go take two!”. The customer would still have check out and size up the company before they do business.

Ah… marketing… is like an outside child in the we Trinis’ business development conversation. It is the deliberate, consistent communication of that identity— shaped to move specific people toward a specific action at specific moments. If you’re targeting the wackerman, he should get off his bam-bam and follow the path you designed for him. It requires the framework described above. It is not a campaign. It is an ongoing discipline.

Below is one of the best analogies for defining marketing that we’ve come across.

Most new businesses in Trinidad and Tobago launched with a product, a skill or an idea and went almost immediately to social media. Not because they made a strategic error, but because they were unaware of the sequence. The formal marketing education that businesses in larger markets receive through courses, business schools and industry networks simply does not exist at the same scale here. The instinct was to do what everyone else was doing, on the platforms everyone else was using.

Many older businesses had to adjust to the new marketing tools and are still grappling with it. Fortunately, many passed the torch to their children, and saw the need for formal education, so sent them to business school. There are many companies in T&T that are either being run by the next generation, or they have very active participlation.

Not that all of them get it, there are many businesses where the social media presence was built on top of a foundation that was never laid. Products posted without a brand. Content created without a message. Audiences accumulated without a relationship being built.

This is not a criticism. It is an objective description of a structural gap that most markets go through at some stage of their digital maturity. The businesses that close the gap first, by going back and doing the foundational work, are the ones that will emerge from the current economic difficulty in a stronger position than their competitors.

There is an asset that businesses with strong marketing foundations have built that cannot be purchased quickly, and this is the part that is most often misunderstood. If Trini business owners look around at many major local brands and companies, they’ll realize this.

There is something called ‘brand equity— the accumulated recognition, trust and preference that a business earns through consistent, principled marketing over time. It is invisible. But it is real, and it is enormously valuable.

A business that has been consistent in its identity, message and quality for three years has built something that a new competitor cannot match by outspending them. The known business gets the benefit of the doubt. The trusted business gets recommended without asking. The preferred business can charge a fair price without justifying every line item.

In a contracting economy like ours, this matters more than at any other time. When customers are spending carefully, they are going to the businesses they already trust. The businesses they know. The businesses whose message has been consistent enough that they have formed an opinion about them before the buying decision even arrives.

Marketing done properly is not a cost, and Trini business owners have to stop thinking this way. It is an investment in an asset that appreciates quietly while the business gets on with its work. The businesses that understand this, and do the foundational work to build it, are not just better positioned for the economic recovery that will come hopefully soon in T&T. They are building something their competitors will struggle to catch.

So Trini business owner, if you read so far, you’re looking for something tangible you can implement. Before the next piece of content gets created, three questions are worth sitting with honestly.

1. Does the business have a written description of exactly who it is trying to reach— not a general category, but a specific person with specific characteristics?
2. Does every piece of content communicate a consistent message in a consistent voice— or does it vary based on whatever felt relevant that week?
3. Is the content being created to build a relationship with the audience, or is it primarily being created to sell something to them?

The answers will point directly to where the foundational work needs to happen.

Even though more followers are nice, the goal was never to get more followers. The goal is to build a business that people trust, choose and recommend. Social media is a powerful road to that destination. But like any road, it only takes you there if you know where you are going, and if you have prepared properly for the journey. You’re not a big international brand like Nike and Coca Cola, but the concepts they apply are so simple and easily replicated even on our teeny, tiny businesses.

At Forward Multimedia, we work with T&T businesses on social media strategy, content and brand positioning; helping them build the framework first and then the presence that represents it. If the conversation above sounds familiar, it may be worth having a different conversation.