Small Business Marketing Strategies

Why niche marketing is scary

By Christian

Niche marketing is scary because it means turning away business, and that is something most small business owners just don’t have the stomach for. It’s unfortunate, but it’s WAY scarier to operate on the premise that your target market is “everyone”.

Why is that scarier? Because it’s literally impossible to sell to “everyone”. Talk about setting yourself up for failure. There is simply no chance that you’re going to sell to everyone. Not even Coca-Cola sells to everyone. Importantly…nor do they try. Coca-Cola markets to a niche. Compare their marketing to Pepsi, and you will see distinct differences. As reader of this post, there’s a good chance you’re either a Coke or Pepsi person. You’re probably not both. You like one or the other, and the same is true in every business. Some customers will really connect with you, others will not. You need to get in touch with the true value you can offer your customers and market yourself accordingly.

Your goal needs to be to connect with the people who really “get” you…who really see value in what you offer.

Attempting to sell to everyone is a losing proposition, because you’re trying to be everything to everyone, and you can’t be. With most people, you’re going to fall short, and when you work in that type of situation you’re forcing yourself to offer a low amount of value. Conversely, there IS a niche where you can really connect. You absolutely CAN connect with a small niche in a big way, and in doing so you will be offering them a very high amount of value.

Niche marketing enables you to offer significantly higher value while earning significantly more from a SMALLER base of people. When you really nail your niche, you become indispensable. Lack of niche marketing is why most small businesses struggle with competitors, and it’s why everyone seems to compete on price. Everyone wants to be the cheapest. We know in our gut this is not the way business is supposed to be. We’re supposed to offer our customers high value, not just sell them a bunch of junk at the lowest possible price.

When you find your niche, you not only become indispensable to your customers, you also become a strong supporter of the people you used to consider your competition. When a customer offers something you don’t do, you send them down the street to your “competition”. It builds good will, it’s great for the economy, and it connects customers with what they really need. Niche marketing is really not nearly as scary as you think. Avoiding it is what’s scary 🙂

How long does blogging take?

By Christian

One of the biggest concerns I hear from clients when it comes to blogging is “how long is this going to take”? I understand. As a business owner, you already have enough on your plate! The last thing you need me to do is to add more 🙂

Let me make an observation that I think may help clear things up a bit.

When you go to the store to pick out your next cell phone, do you sigh and say “how much time am I going to have to spend on this thing”? Of course not! It’s a communication tool. You use it for your business. When someone calls, you WANT to answer it, because it’s an essential element of running your business.

Well, your blog is a phone.

You didn’t use to have a cell phone, but now you do, and it’s really no big deal is it? Same with your blog. You didn’t use to have one, but it’s become common knowledge that having a blog is simply a great communication tool. Instead of talking with your customers and clients one at a time, a blog allows you to talk with ALL of them all at once.

Actually when used well, a blog will improve your communication with your customers and SAVE you time. But this is advanced stuff, so let’s not get too crazy for today. Right now, just take a minute and try to think of your blog simply as a communication tool. It’s a phone, really. It’s just a way to interact. Can you afford to NOT have a cell phone? Can you afford to NOT have a blog?

Don’t reinvent the wheel!

By Christian

Think about this:

Have you written an article on your blog that’s received a great response? Why don’t you take that content and turn it into a pdf report. Design a cover for it, and repackage it as a free report. Put it up on a squeeze page, and use that great, proven content as a way to build your email list a bit more?
Do you get the same question from your prospects about your product all the time? Instead of writing the same response in an email over and over again, why not just copy and paste it into a FAQ on your website? Or turn that content into a blog post?
Have you sold a service effectively? Is it possible to document the service you perform, and turn that service into an information product to sell?
Why don’t you take a collection of your most popular blog posts, and edit them all together into a book to sell?

Don’t reinvent the wheel!

Don’t reinvent the wheel. This will save you so much time! So much of what you do can be reused again and again. Think about it. Anytime you write a blog post, respond to an email, do a phone consult, take a photograph, have a meeting at your office…you’re creating media. The awesome thing about media is that it’s highly fungible. Blog posts and emails can easily be copied into different formats. Meetings and phone calls can be recorded and packaged together into blog content or even products to be sold. Look at what you’re doing in your business now, and ask yourself how you can use the media you’re ALREADY creating in other ways.

Again, don’t reinvent the wheel. Take what you’re already doing and reuse it over and over. I have a report up on this site right now called “My 7 Horrible Marketing Mistakes”. It’s a highly valuable report that can save business owners a lot of time, money and hassle with their marketing. It helps business owners get better results faster. But I didn’t just put the report up. I put up three different squeeze pages marketing the same report to different groups of people within my niche market.

Is this cheating?

Is reusing and repackaging your content cheating? Are you breaking the rules by doing this? No. You’re taking the content you put out and making it as valuable and accessible to as many people as possible. Some people like to read blogs. Some prefer ebooks. Others still like video…give them what they want.

When you think about your business this way, it becomes a lot easier to put out that product you’ve always wanted to put out. It becomes a lot easier to maintain your blog, because you realize that you’re ALREADY creating all the content for it…you just need to capture it! By doing this you not only reach a wider audience, but you also leverage your time.

Are You “Getting Ready to Get Ready”?

By Christian

When it comes to increasing our sales, we are often compelled to focus on a number of things:

Refine our business plan
Improve our product
Run more ads
Hire an assistant
Go back through past clients and survey them, find out how we can improve
Take on a new lead generation system

There is value in all this, but it all comes second. If we do these things at the exclusion of engaging our customers on a personal level, nothing else matters. You can do this a number of different ways:

Phone calls
Social networking
Responding to comments on your blog
Interacting with your audience in forums
Contacting people on your email, mail or phone list

These are obviously just a few examples. Here’s the point: so many of us don’t like selling, but at the end of the day, sales need to be made. If it’s not getting done, it doesn’t matter how many cool systems you have in place. It also doesn’t matter how refined your business plan is. It also does not matter what your past clients say to you or how many great leads they refer to you…if you don’t have a strong sales system in place that is put into action daily, you won’t increase your sales.

What matters is genuine, earnest engagement between YOU and your CUSTOMERS

Make a decision how you will engage and interact with your potential customers daily. Do it with a blog. Do it with a phone. Do it with a pen and paper if you want…it doesn’t matter how you do it. Blogs aren’t magic. They just work. They are an awesome tool. They’re a tool that works really well…if you use it. Same is the case with any sales system. What matters is not the method of engagement. What matters is that there is engagement. You need to get ear to ear, face-to-face, with your customers in whatever way you can.

Do it however you wish, just do it

You may be inclined to argue that not all methods of engagement are equal. Certainly some are better than others. For example, selling vacuum cleaners door to door is certainly not as effective as selling through other means, correct? I’d like to point out that I know more than one person personally that earns a high six-figure income doing just that. It’s not what I consider ideal; it’s not how I roll these days. I feel I’ve found ways to market my business much more effectively. That said, if you can earn $50k+ monthly selling door to door in this day and age, you can do well doing ANYTHING.

Tweak as you go, but get started. Stop trying to figure out the system that will work best for you, and get busy putting something that makes sense to you into action. Figure out the rest as you go. It will be messy, and that’s how real top producers get stuff done. They just do it.

Make a plan, then EXECUTE

Making a plan is crucial. Take 10 minutes. Make a plan. Then put it into action. Action is key, not perfection. I talk with clients all the time that are spending too much time trying to “figure stuff out”, trying to “perfect their systems”. They’re getting ready to get ready. If you ask me, an ounce of action beats a pound of preparation. Go make it happen.

How to Get More Money

By Christian

When I was selling vacuum cleaners door to door (yes, I did!) there always came a time when my demonstration was finished, and it was time to show the customer the price sheet. It was a stressful time. In sales we have a high tech name for this. It is “asking for the order”. If you want someone to buy something you need to usually ask them to buy it.

Duh, right?

Could it be simpler?

Well, most people don’t do it. In business, you’re probably actually very good at what you do. After all, you do it all day every day. You have skills that are valuable to others, and you’re probably comfortable giving a customer a brochure, responding to emails with questions or any number of other things that demonstrate your ability to give the customer or client value. But do you take the next step and actually ask people to buy?

Working with sales people, marketers and business owners in tons of different niches, I’m regularly confronted with this basic step being skipped. It’s essential to remember that people rarely take action on their own. Their needs to be a precipitating event. Something needs to happen to prompt their action. They need to be shown the next step. You’re the professional, no? Well if you’re the professional, you know when it’s time to make a buying decision. Of course, sometimes that decision is going to be “no thanks”. That’s part of being in business. But ASKING FOR THE ORDER is also part of being in business. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

If you don’t ask you don’t get. Really!

How to get more money

Sometimes business owners stress on what to charge. Especially when it comes to consulting, we often feel pressured to sell our time much too cheaply. Back to my vacuum sales example…the price I charged back then (this was many years ago at this point…I’m certain the price is higher now) was about $1600. Yes, $1600 for a vacuum cleaner. You may think that is a very high price, and you’d be right. Importantly, I believe in the product, and I will only ever use that type of vacuum cleaner to this day. I only ever sell products or services that I believe in 100%. That said, it’s very expensive.

So who in the world pays that much for a vacuum cleaner? The answer is no one does…with one exception. Those who are asked. Of those who are asked to purchase a vacuum cleaner for $1600, approximately 1 in 3 say yes. 1 in 3? Yes. 1 in 3. Is asking for the order really that effective? In my experience, yes it is.

It appears that if you ask, you just might get what you want…not every single time, but pretty darn often.

It’s expensive to be inexpensive

Why would you sell your time (or anything for that matter) too cheaply? What ends up happening? You end up resenting the work, don’t you? And clients still complain that you charge too much, don’t they? How much is the right amount to charge for your product? Charge the amount that makes you feel good about doing it. Pricing is an element of marketing much more than it ever reflects actual value. Actual value doesn’t exist. Pricing does exist, so charge what you’re worth!

Does this mean you have to charge $1000 an hour? Of course not, but I know many consultants who do. Even more. The point is not price. The point is that there are plenty of clients who will pay basically whatever you ask them to pay. You have to position yourself, and then simply ASK FOR THE ORDER. That’s how you get more money.