If you want to increase your sales, revenues AND profits, you will love this post. It shows 2 areas of your business you need to focus on and provides a link to dozens of practical ideas you can use.
1. You need to focus on increasing the value of your work
We live in an age where someone can go to Google and in a few minutes, find providers in your industry, claiming to offer what you offer, for less money. You don’t want to have to compete by being cheapest, so the alternative is to focus on value.
If you pump enough value into what you do and lift your service is head and shoulders above the average providers in your industry, you are no longer competing with them. Prices or fees are no longer the same factor they were.
For example, the most expensive restaurant in your city isn’t competing with the local fast food joints on price. The reason people will pay hundreds for a meal in a top restaurant, is that they are not paying for the calories. They can buy the calories at Burger King for pennies! They are paying for the experience. They are paying for the value.
The answer? I suggest you stop doing what 99% of your competitors do. Instead, be different. Not different just for the sake of it, but different because you are offering a uniquely valuable experience. The starting point for me and many others I know, came when we stopped doing work that paid and started doing work that mattered.
2. You need to focus on marketing your value
You don’t want your business to be the best kept secret in town. For your business to succeed, you need your marketing to attract the attention of the right people and show them just how great you are.
Earning people’s attention is harder today than ever before, because your prospective clients have never had so much information to navigate through every day. Your marketing is trying to get noticed, in a non-stop deluge of messages. Your prospective clients are being bombarded with everything from radio / TV commercials, email marketing, text messages and social media updates, to direct mail, websites, cold callers and newspaper ads. It’s non-stop and somehow, you need to get noticed.
The answer? If you are serious about getting your message heard above all those other people trying to do the same, you need to be significantly better then they are, at earning the attention of your marketplace. Some of those guys are very good, others are good and others are just very noisy. A great place to start, is to understand that the more you pester people, the less likely it is that they will listen to you. People hate being pestered or pursued.
Small business marketing 2012 style
The kind of marketing you need, is marketing that earns people’s attention and then earns their consideration. This blog post is a great example. You are reading this now, because you either subscribe to the blog or visited the blog and read it. Below this free information, there’s a short note letting people know that if they want me to show them how to get great marketing results, they just need to get in touch. This week, around a hundred thousand people will see that message below my posts, without me needing to pay for ads, attend networking events or pester anyone.
Some free help
I’ve just updated my Top Marketing Tips. It’s now a few thousand words long and contains dozens of practical ideas, tips and suggestions, to help you massively improve your marketing.
Of course, if you’d like me to work with you and show you exactly what you need to do, read the message below.