What Marketing Can’t Do For You
Marketing’s presence is so pervasive that it seems like everyone who is anyone has their own marketing team, right? That’s a fallacy. Marketing can and will help you find your voice and succeed as a business owner, but if you let it do even half of the work for you, you’ll fail.
Marketing doesn’t just mean simply posting your business information on social media or plastering ads all over the place. It means taking personal effort to learn your audience, finding their struggles and target markets, understanding what they need from your product/business/service so they can continue to buy without having to be sold on anything else.
A lot of people think that marketing is making the excuse to say, “Oh, we’re not so much a business or a seller as much as we are an advocate.” That may be true, but there is nothing wrong with using your position in life to make a little money as well!
There was once a time when marketing was considered something that should be done by professionals. If you were trying to build your business, you should hire someone who knew how to do it for you. Things have changed…
You don’t need to hire an agency if your goal is to simply publish newsletters, run Facebook ads and research competitors for ideas. In fact, you might find that marketing isn’t necessary at all!
Where Do I Start?
Find a way to reach your audience so you can understand them. Many of the things you need to know about your business can be discovered with a basic understanding of your customer and their needs. Talk to them, ask them questions and discover how they feel about your business and its competitors. From there, figure out what it is about yourself/your product/service that makes them want it so bad! Then, offer it to them in a way that takes into account their emotions.
Now, figure out what marketing can do for your business. The answer might be a lot more than you’d expect. One of the most effective ways to create value for someone is to give them something back in return. Giving them value will not only help you build a reputation and build trust with your audience, but it will help you find and keep customers.
People who feel like they are getting something from a business are far less likely to leave than those who don’t feel like they’re getting anything at all. In fact, the more you give people, the more you will get in return. It’s true that those who are receiving free stuff usually feel they’re paying for it later on, but if you offer a quality product or service that is worth your money then people will be willing to pay for it anyway.
For example: My wife and I recently took our three sons on a family trip to Disney World. During the 10-day trip, we received a free vacation package that included passes to all of Disney World’s theme parks (four theme parks in total), full access to all of the Disney cruise ships and one-of-a-kind memorabilia from Disney characters.
That trip was going to cost $1,000 (not including airfare) if we had purchased all of those things separately. Considering that we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on a Disney vacation and our kids hadn’t been to Disney before, that took some negotiating, but we were able to negotiate enough to pay $200 each for everything. And, it was worth every penny!
Think about why you run your business. Your business exists for one reason: because you want something out of it other than money. Why are you in business? For profit? Yes. But also for fun. For freedom. For a reason. Think about the reason you’re in business and then decide if marketing is worth it to you.
The Problem With Marketing
Marketing is often misunderstood by small-business owners because it really seems like everything has been sold to death already. Advertisements, social media posts and newsletter subscriptions have saturated the market and made it hard for new ideas to be shared.
This is where the biggest problem with marketing comes in: It’s overused. Because of how common marketing is now, many entrepreneurs feel like they can’t create a new idea without finding an opportunity. When you’re trying to start something new, marketing can be a great way to get your name out there, but that doesn’t mean you should do all of it yourself!
Marketing is about much more than just leaving your business information on social media or posting ads everywhere you go. It’s about finding a way to be heard without inundating your audience with information about you. It’s about finding your voice and making it known to the world, which will help you find the people who want what you have to offer.
Your marketing plan can leverage all of the things businesses do on a regular basis, like social media posts or newsletters, but it’s still different than what they usually see. For example: You can leave a brief message on Facebook asking people to like your page and/or follow you, but these are also messages that are already old news to most people who use Facebook.
To stand out from the crowd and succeed, you need to find a different way to get your message out there. And how do you do that? By using marketing tactics that make people want to hear your message. That’s why most successful marketing campaigns are still new ideas and new approaches.
Now, let’s look at two great books about marketing. Both of these books cover a lot of ground, but I’ll break down my top recommendation for taking your business beyond just having a nice website, writing some content and sending out a newsletter or two.
The first book is “Selling the Invisible” by Harry Beckwith. In this book, Harry teaches you how to find new ideas and sell to people who are worth selling to. He also shows you how to stay relevant in a very noisy world.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to marketing, this is definitely a book you should be reading! Along with the basic principles of marketing, Harry also shows you how to develop new approaches and techniques by breaking down existing marketing strategies and finding ways they can be improved on.
The second book I recommend is “Made To Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
Conclusion
Marketing is more important than ever, but it’s also not something that you can do on your own. The key to making marketing work for you is to find new ways to do it. Instead of posting the same old thing on your Facebook page, start a blog and write articles that are worth reading. Instead of sending out anything and everything where people are already overloaded with information, find a new idea and pursue it!
Once you get your business off the ground and start getting prospects in the door, marketing will help keep them coming back. If you don’t know what works yet, take a look at some examples of successful marketing strategies and use those to get started.