28 March 2008

Stuff marketing - Think credibility

So you are not getting the results you want from your marketing campaign.
  • You have profiled your perfect customer.
  • You have got your message out to your target market.
  • You have highlighted the benefits and given the features.
  • Everyone you show your advert to thinks it is fantastic.
And yet no-one is buying. At least not in viable numbers.

I've got a suggestion:
Stop thinking "marketing" and start thinking "credibility."

Despite your wonderful offering, you simply are not credible enough for people to buy from you.

This really struck home for me at a fairly tender age. I remember running around as a youngster looking for personal sponsors for my surfing. The target market was surf shops and surf related gear manufacturers.

So there I was running around with photos and goodness only knows what else, waving my hands as to what an exciting prospect I was and what a worthwhile investment I'd be until one wise bill said to me:
You've told me how good you are. When everybody else starts telling me how good you are I'll sponsor you.

Credibility. I had none.

I've seen lots of business owners over the years never quite get their marketing right.

I've been to marketing seminars, read books, listened to tapes, watched vidoes, read blogs and been to goodness only knows how many marketing websites - all punting all sorts of marketing mixes, messages, strategies and other variants on the theme of marketing.

Here are some of them:
  • You need repeated exposure before an advert works.
  • You need to call 7 times to get the sale.
  • Incorporating sex helps if you're selling to men.
  • Incorporating family helps in selling to women.
  • Be likeable. Smile and shake hands.
  • Be fascinated with them. Stop trying to be fascinating yourself.
  • Identify the need. Then introduce your solution.
  • And of course, if the need isn't in mind - create the need!!
Yeah. They all work. I've got no gripe there. And I believe you can spend days, weeks, even years practicing and experimenting for the penny to drop and get the concepts gelled in your head that will one day lead to your killer marketing strategy. But maybe here's a shortcut.

Stuff marketing - Think credibility.

What you need is to be credible. This is a contest for credibility.

It's all very well getting your message to places where it will be found by people who need your solution. But when they get there:
Your message needs to be credible. You need to be credible.

And if you aren't credible, you're going to need someone who is credible to deliver that message for you.

So maybe before you go spending good money chasing exposure, start thinking about what you can do to make sure your message is the most credible option for your consumer when it reaches him or her.

What can you do to improve your credibility?
It would be great to hear what you think about this.

21 March 2008

The good and bad of the OMB

Oh boy do I ever remember the days of being a one man business. It was great!!
The freedom. The fun. That feeling of making your own way.

If it's going to be, it's up to me - Oh Yeah Baby!
Oh yes. I remember that now. That's the problem with reminiscing - you tend to remember the good times and forget the bad.

That was the blessing and the curse. No me - no business.

Here's what I really liked most about my one man business - Once I had it tuned and optimised, I had my monthly overheads covered by the end of the first week of the month. The rest of the month's earnings was pretty much discretionary income.

The second big plus was that with no start-up capital to kick off with, the overheads simply don't come any lower.

But there were some downsides. For starters "No work No pay" takes on a whole new meaning for the OMB. And if for some reason you can't work - even if it is from circumstances beyond your control - you'd better have left some money in the cookie jar from the good months.

That, of course, was the next problem - that spare change. What's the use of making good money when you can never take the time out to spend it? Sure, you can spend it on stuff to play with on the weekend - but how about taking 3 weeks off? Or more? Holidays are a little tricky to juggle as an OMB. For 3 years or so all I managed to get was the occasional long weekend.

There was another major drawback. You know how a fair size business has owners, managers, sales reps, secretaries and all that other stuff? Look in the mirror - there's your team to take care of all that. Now if all you've got is a technical skill, that can be something of a challenge.

When you're starting out, all those handicaps aren't a problem, really. Well, they are, but you're all fired up (or in my case simply desperate) and prepared to do what it takes, so you just do it.

But if you're ever going to turn your enterprise into a business machine that earns your keep whether you are there or not, sooner or later you are going to need a plan.

Can you relate to any of this? Please let me know.

15 March 2008

Are you a slave to your business?

So you are a business owner! I've got a question for you.

Do you own your business, or does your business own you?

Ever since I went into my first serious business venture at the relatively tender age of 22, I've always had this vision -

My business is a machine that gives me what I want.
And in a general way that was to be able to:

  • do what I want
  • have whatever I wanted
  • whenever I wanted it.
In a shorter way, what I really wanted was freedom of choice. Options.

The basic plan was that I would spend some effort putting together this business machine to produce two things, lots of free time and lots of money. Equipped with these two rather useful commodities, I'd let my imagination take care of how to consume them.

The harsh reality is that most times my business ventures haven't produced the goods. And judging by many business folk I have chatted to over the years since starting out, I'm far from alone. In fact, more often than not, I've found the typical business owner is really a slave in a gilded cage - and that is when the business is successful!

When the business is not doing so well, it's more like being a slave on a ball and chain.

Unlocking the secrets of the business puzzle has been quite a long road for me. I don't pretend I've got the job done yet. But at least nowadays I do have the time to do the things I want to rather than the things I have to. I might not have mastered making enough money to buy all the toys I'd like just yet, but frankly that hasn't been what has proved the most difficult to achieve.

It was getting time freedom from my business that has proved to be the big challenge. Breaking the chains and getting out of the gilded cage.

And here is my confession. The problem was not the businesses - the problem was me!

I'd suggest that for so many business owners who find themselves slaves to their own business, the problem is with the owner too.

So this will be the theme of this blog - unlocking why and how we become slaves to our business. And how to fix it.

I'll be sharing my road to creating my own little business machine. My mistakes and my successes. And some of the stories of people I've met along the way.

And perhaps along the way something will touch you, and be the spark that let's you create a business machine that will give you all you want too.

Can you relate to any of this? Please let me know.