There’s no doubt that these are worrying times.

There’s equally no doubt that this scenario is an incubator for opportunities to flourish.

Allow me to explain.

We’re looking at 2021 with no clear idea about what impact COVID-19 will have. None of us know when things will return to normal.

Perhaps just as worrying, is that things are almost certainly going to be very different from before, when they return to normal.

So even ‘normal’ will look different, whenever it arrives.

Here’s the thing: When faced with confusion, the tendency is to worry. To hunker down until things go back the way they were. That’s not going to happen. The past truly is the past.

This means that business owners waiting for the old, familiar ways to return before planning what to do, have no end point. No defining date to bounce back stronger. So they’ll drift, which is a lousy idea because you can’t drift your way to success or even survival.

Two points about this confusion and worry

Firstly, as business owners we need to learn to dance with the confusion. Move with the challenges. Live with the changing direction of our marketplace. This means planning for the super short-term as well as the medium and long-term. Checking the numbers once a month is like running blind. Keeping our finger on the pulse is essential.

Secondly, as business owners we have to be very aware that this same confusion and nervousness is impacting everyone else. Our clients and customers are confused. So are our prospective clients and customers. Their decision making is likely to be a lot less predictable than it used to be. We need to keep this in mind, as contracts come up for renewal. We also need to acknowledge that our marketing has to adjust (and adjust and adjust) to the evolving situation, or we’ll become irrelevant.

Flourishing

Every business challenge creates an incubator for opportunities to flourish. Before calling bullshit, take those two points I just mentioned.

• One business owner will see them as 100% negative.
• Another will identify (at least) a dozen opportunities to improve their business and own their competitors.

What makes this a perfect storm to flourish, is that the vast majority of business owners are focused on the gloom. This static majority wait and hope, leaving their marketplace wide open to the motivated and agile minority.

• Interestingly, both types of business owner are equally fearful.
• All that changes is the reaction they choose when faced with fear. Their response.

Fear either inspires us to respond with positive action, or causes us to respond by hunkering down and doing nothing. It’s where the phrase ‘scared stiff’ comes from.

The key here is that both responses are a choice we make. And our choice is a critically important factor in our results over the coming months and years.

In short, look for the opportunities. If you can’t see them, find someone who knows where to look. Adapt and adjust as required. If you don’t know how, find someone who does.

Almost every small business owner is wasting their time and money on the wrong kind of marketing.

Here’s why you’re probably making the same mistake, plus an example of what happens, when you switch to the right kind of marketing.

The wrong kind of marketing

I’m referring to the obvious stuff that small business owners think of, when they consider marketing.

This includes the things they do when business is quiet and they have to do SOMETHING. The things that look easy enough for them to try. The things they copy from their competitors. The predictable, uninspiring messages they put on their websites, newsletters and social media accounts. In short: the obvious things that small business owners dabble with.

That’s not how you grow a business. No. That’s running blind, hoping you’ll get lucky. And it’s why the majority of small businesses go broke.

The right kind of marketing

I’m referring to creative marketing. You already know what creative marketing looks like. It’s what 100% of successful businesses do; from the expanding small businesses in your marketplace, to the consultants who work from home yet service international brands and earn a fortune. It’s also what the world’s fastest-growing brands do and how they stay ahead.

Creative marketing is not only spectacularly effective, it’s rare among small (and medium-sized) businesses. Really rare. This is one of the reasons it’s so powerful, compared to the dabbling bullshit I mentioned earlier.

Here are just a handful of reasons why creative marketing is so powerful.

• It’s hard to copy, which means it carries on working.
• It requires little or zero money, so your competitors can’t out-spend you (think about that for a moment).
• It stands out, so you get noticed.
• It helps you differentiate your business, products or services, so you never have to sell based on prices / fees or work with low value clients.
• It inspires your prospective clients to take action.
• It gets shared. This increases the reach of your marketing.
• It’s memorable. Because small business marketing is useless, creative marketing finds it easy to make a positive, memorable impact.
• It touches people in a way that never happens with uncreative marketing.

Still not convinced?

I’d like to tell you about Sara.

What creative marketing can do

Sara emailed me before the pandemic and invited me to lunch. She’s semi-retired now, but I mentored her a while ago and we’ve been great friends ever since. She now knows how to creatively build an extremely profitable business, in any sector or industry. She’d previously been a very good business consultant, but always struggled to get the flow of high quality clients she needed. Sara went on to build an amazing business and today invests in small and medium-sized businesses.

Why am I telling you this?

Over lunch, Sara told me that 2 and a half years ago she’d invested in a small, independent bakery. The bakery was already employing great people, already using premium quality ingredients and already making delicious food. BUT too few of the right kind of customers knew it was there, as they’d been using typical, small business marketing.

Sara spotted an opportunity and because she knew the owners, she offered them a price for their business. They eagerly accepted, especially as Sara promised she’d employ the same team to run it. (And they were going broke).

I asked Sara how the bakery was doing. She said she’s increased the turnover by almost 1100% and it’s massively more profitable, too.

One thousand, one hundred percent.

Massively higher profits.

Remember: She kept the same team, the same levels of quality, the same delicious food. Her only change was to switch from typical small business marketing, to creative marketing.

This probably goes without saying

But I’ll say it anyway.

If you’re currently dabbling with the usual type of ineffective, small business marketing, it’s time to switch.

Switch to a deliberate, creativity-driven approach. It’s what 100% of my work is based on, both with my clients and my own business.

Punch above your weight, by creatively gaining the attention, trust and patronage of your marketplace (ahead of your competitors). Look to the future with excitement, not apprehension, because your creativity-driven approach works perfectly in every economy, location and industry.

And it has never been more effective, than it is right now.

Today I want to make an important plea to you. I want you to focus like a laser on making your business absolutely thrive over the next 12-months.

Yes, I know it’s 2020.

Yes, I’m very aware of the challenges.

I am also aware of the importance of looking to your future with the overriding goal of absolutely thriving.

When the marketplace is in turmoil, business owners set one of the following two broad targets. They either choose to survive (the vast majority) or they choose to thrive (a tiny minority).

We must choose our target wisely.

• Choosing to survive means you may just make it, if you achieve the target.
• Choosing to thrive means you’ll have an exceptional year, if you achieve the target.
• If you fail the target of survival, even by 1%, by default you don’t survive.
• If you fail the target of thriving, even by 25%, you can still have a better-than-average or average year.

Your target determines your focus. It sets the stage for the plans you make and the decisions you take. It shapes the conversations you have. It guides the opportunities you attract (and those you repel).

Your target also determines how you feel and how you make others feel about you and your business. It builds or erodes confidence.

• Survival mode is a source of anxiety. When we speak with an anxious business owner, we sense their worry and stress. We feel apprehensive about them and apprehension turns prospective customers away.
• Thrive mode is a source of excitement. When we speak with an excited business owner, we sense their energy and motivation. We feel positive about them. This is commercial gold dust. Especially today.

Given this, we all have a decision to make.

We can’t change the duration of the pandemic, or the even longer duration of the economic carnage it leaves us with. But we can choose the target we focus on.

And as I have seen with my 2020 client intake, it is possible to absolutely thrive.

The iPhone 12 was announced by Apple yesterday.

With the launch, came an extremely valuable marketing lesson.

The lesson?

Apple knows that just a tiny percentage of people who buy the new iPhone, actually need a new iPhone. Their current phone works perfectly fine for everything they need.

The vast majority buy a new iPhone, because they want to feel better. And they hope that buying a new iPhone is the answer.

The world’s most valuable company knows that people make purchasing decisions based on feelings, not logic. However, most small business owners market their business based on logic, not feelings.

And that’s a really, really bad idea.

Instead…

As a business owner, you need to do everything possible to magnify the positive feelings associated with buying your products or services. You need to let people know how enjoyable it is working with you. You need to explain how happy they’ll feel, owning your (whatever). This means fewer statistics and graphs, but more emphasis on positive emotions.

So ease up on the logic. Focus way more on feelings.

Because emotion drives motion (action).

And people need to take action, to buy from you or hire you.

Without knowing it, many business owners are engaged in a dangerous race to the bottom. In today’s post, I explain why this is almost always a terrible strategy for business owners. I also share some proven advice on how to avoid it happening to you.

Let’s go.

Race to the bottom: What does it mean?

In marketing, we tend to use the term to refer to making sales or winning new clients, based on being the cheapest option. This is most common among commodity businesses. However, the current economy is seeing a massive surge in price cutting and fee reductions. The ‘winner’ of the race to the bottom is the business that’s the cheapest / lowest priced at that time.

Some big businesses use their financial muscle to work successfully with low prices (or fees). Their buying power means that they have deals available to them, which smaller businesses simply can’t access. This allows larger businesses to compete in your marketplace, profitably, with extremely low prices.

However, small and medium-sized business owners tend to just lower their prices, as a way to make more sales or attract more clients. They then find their competitors do the same.

And the race to the bottom begins.

The prize?

The winner gets, wait for it… the privilege of building a business on a dangerous foundation of customers, who will leave them the moment a cheaper provider comes along.

It’s a high risk, low return strategy. It requires you to constantly look for ways to lower your overhead, cut corners and speed things up. All this, in an effort to attract the least loyal profile of customers in the world: Those who switch from provider to provider, looking for the lowest prices.

Why is such a high risk, low return strategy so popular with small business owners?

Simple.

They see it as an easy way to attract more customers or make more sales. However, a look at the medium and longer term picture shows why this usually goes horribly wrong.

Here’s what I’ve seen small business owners do over and over again.

Bob’s race to the bottom

Let’s take Bob the business owner as an example.

• Bob decides to lower his prices by 10%. He soon notices a slightly better sales conversion rate.
• So, he lowers prices by another 5%. And it improves sales even more.
• Some of Bob’s competitors decide to do the same.
• The race to the bottom is now on!
• Bob then needs to lower his prices by another (whatever)%, because his competitors are charging the same low prices as him. Bob’s prices are now rock bottom or very close to rock bottom.
• Bob continues to make some sales, BUT with very, very little profit.
• At this point, it’s a case of waiting for one of the following common scenarios.
• Scenario one: A well-funded competitor decides to sell at a loss for 6 / 12 months (to gain market share), Bob then has to try and survive on fewer and fewer low-profit sales. This is HUGE right now, as financially strong small business owners seek to crush their competitors during the pandemic.
• Scenario two: Bob’s overhead increases unexpectedly and he is forced to start increasing his prices, all those price sensitive customers he raced to win will now look for the NEW, cheapest provider.

It’s easy to attract customers by reducing your prices. However, it’s unsustainable. So, if this is something you are considering, please think again my friend. Consider the medium and longer-term consequences of winning the race to the bottom.

The marketplace we serve has changed.

What is very clear now, is that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed how our clients, customers and marketplace think. And we need to adapt our services and marketing accordingly, or slowly cease to be relevant to their new wants and needs.

Here are some of the most common changes.

• It’s changing their personal life. People are worried about elderly relatives, children, their jobs and their futures. They’re also unable to meet family and friends face-to-face. Some have unexpected, serious financial concerns. Others are dealing with unprecedented levels of stress.
• It’s changing their work life. Many people (and entire departments) now work from home. Others are unable to, and have the added worry of increased exposure to the virus. The whole dynamic of work has changed.
• It’s changing their company budgets. Some areas are no longer being invested in, whilst others are getting bumper investment.
• It’s changing their outlook. Things that people used to take for granted are now exceptionally important. And many of the things they thought were important aren’t important at all.
• It’s changing their comfort levels. Many who were previously of a generally happy persuasion, are now eagerly seeking comfort. And many who were previously assured, are now seeking assurance.

Everyone in business needs to factor these enormous changes into their planning. We need to review our products or services and either make them relevant to the landscape or replace them with relevant alternatives. With most economists now expecting things to remain volatile for at least the next 6 months, it’s not viable to just wait until our pre-pandemic plans are relevant again.

It’s also really important to review our marketing messages. What motivated our prospects this time last year, could have the opposite impact today. If it speaks to a carefree time, where your prospective customers were relatively confident about what the future held for them, it will be massively less effective today and possibly, fully ineffective soon.

Our world has changed. Our lives have changed. Our marketplace has changed. Our planning needs to reflect this.