Global Marketing Plus

The better you are known for being a leader in your field, the easier it will be to attract business.  Most of the successful small business owners ($100,000+) I have worked with were not well known when they started out.  Many became known by positioning themselves to become recognized leaders in their field.

The positioned themselves by doing one of the following:

• Gaining greater knowledge in their field
• Assuming a leadership role in their field
• Beginning a new field

For example, some of the things I have done to position me as an expert are:

1. Volunteer my time as a counselor with SCORE.
2. Served as Chapter Chair for SCORE for several years.  This brought me into contact with many more influential people that thought of me as an expert, and many became strategic alliances and regularly feed me new business.
3. Volunteered my time as the executive director of a local Chamber of Commerce and built the membership by 300%.
4. Helped many non-profit companies be successful by donating my time to re-organize the company.
5. Write articles for newspapers and newsletters.
6. Have been a guest on many radio shows.
7. Have served on numerous trade associations for the marketing, website design and printing industries.
8. Held workshops and seminars on website design and website marketing.
9. Taught classes on website marketing at a local college

The list goes on, but that will give you an idea of things you can do to set yourself up as the expert in your field.

Becoming the expert in your field means people think of you first.  It is an ideal marketing strategy for anyone who doesn’t like marketing because:

• It gives you access to strategic alliances
• Establishes you in a niche
• Gives you momentum you need to bring people to you

All while you are doing the things you’re most interested in doing.

Many of the most successful small businesses ($100,000+) that I have worked with have become successful because they had access to the people that made the buying decisions.  They gained that access because of strategic alliances.

A strategic alliance is a person that knows and trusts you and works with you to build your business by feeding referrals to you.

For example, in a printing company I own, I have strategic alliances with graphic artists, business consultants, bankers, copy shops, and even other printers that do not have the capabilities of high quality full color that I specialize in.  When any of my strategic alliances are talking to one of their customers and they see a need for high quality printing, they refer them to me and give them one of my business cards.  They then let me know of the referral and give me contact information so I can follow up.  I, likewise, do the same for them with my customers or contacts that I feel need their services.

Some of the most successful businesses are started with strategic alliances already in place, which makes getting business easier and quicker.  But even if you are a wall flower and don’t know a soul that you feel could help you with your business, there are specific ways you can go about meeting and establishing successful relationships with the strategic alliances you need.

In later posts I will discuss in detail how to find and use strategic alliances as a source of regular business.

The most successful home-based or small businesses that I have analyzed are highly specialized.  They have a product or service that serves a small niche that no one else is serving properly or not available.

One of the biggest mistakes I find most small businesses make is they try to be everything to everyone.  They are afraid they will miss work if they speicalize and not tell people they do “everything”!

Little do they realize that if they define thier niche properly, they would get  more business!  Instead of being a general management consultant they are consultants to the fashion industry on collection problems.  They don’t have a general billing service but they do billing for anesthesiologist.  They don’t have an employment agency, they have a temporary agency exclusively for design professionals … or escrow officers … etc.

In 1998, when I took over a printing company that was on the verge of bankruptcy, there was no niche described.  This print shop could do almost any kind of printing from small black and white quick copy up to 19″ x 25″ full color.  The company advertised a very long list of items that could be printed.  This made this company no different that 12 other printers within a 5 mile radius.

I instantly formed formed a new company called “Medi Forms”, with the niche of providing printing to hospitals, doctors and the medical industry. 

This company became so successful that after it was well established, I formed 4 more companies:

• “Real Estate Forms”  - to provide printing to Real Estate Brokers and agents and others in the real estate industry.
• “Insure Forms”  - to provide printing to the insurance industry.
• “Legal Forms”  - to provide printing to the legal industry.
• “Restaurant Forms”  - to provide printing to restaurants and others in the food industry. 

Each one of these companies had a niche and “specialized” in printing in their respective industries.  Each company had it’s own salesmen.  Now the parent company continued to print all the assorted printing it used to, but the public perceived that the company that called on them was the expert in thier industry.  The new companies stood out from the competition.  Why would a customer in the medical industry take a risk of having a general printer print his important forms when there was a company that specialized in only medical printing?

So whatever stage your business is in, focusing it as tightly as possible on one or, possibly, two specialty areas will make it easier for you to attract clients or customers.

The fear of doing this, of course, is that by narrowing your market you will have fewer people to draw from and fewer people will buy.  In reality, the opposite is true.  As long as the special area you have chosen has enough potential customers, the more specialized your business, the more people will be able to recognize the benefit of what you offer them.

Finding a niche means clearly identifying a group of people who need a product or service that your are distinctively able to provide.  The more competitive the field you are in, the more important it is for you to find what you are uniquely qualified to do.

The niche needs to be small enough that you don’t have any competition.  It also needs to be large enough to provide sufficient customers to support your business.

When two personnel managers left their jobs at a large department store to become management consultants, they, like many entrepreneurs, had a wide variety of skills and interests.  They structured their business to feature as many of these skills and interests as possible.  Their brochure listed five different services from editorial work to financial counseling.  This material, however, conveyed no clear idea what they actually did or for whom they could do it.

The solution is not for these people to give up their varied interests and skills, rather to focus their interests to find a specialized platform upon which to provide their skills.

For example, the personnel managers might form a business called Boutique Management, providing a wide variety of personnel functions for clothing stores that are too small to have a personnel department.

No matter what products or services you provide, you can carve out a niche for them based on your experience, skills, and interests and then build up that niche as you work to service it.

Over the past 35 years, (especially the past 12 as a counselor for SCORE), I have worked with hundreds of small businesses and home-based businesses.  I have analyzed the marketing strategies of the most successful - those making over $100,000 a year.  I found that the successful ones do one or more of six things that others usually do not do.

1. Get people to “beat a path to your door”.  This is what all self-employed people want.  They think that if they provide a good enough or even a great product or service, customers will magically materialize.  So sure that this will be the case, most people going into business for their self don’t even plan on how to get business and are sure they will never have to sell.

Rarely, if ever, does that happen!

However, if you are good at what you do, with proper marketing, you can put together a plan that will draw people to you.

You can:

• Find a need that is not currently being offered … something people want so badly that they would do almost anything to get it.  
• Develop as high a profile as possible with those who need your skills.  Become so well known among the people who want your products or services that plenty of them know that you’re offering it.  
• Do the highly valuable things you do so well that everyone who uses you can’t wait to tell everyone else about you.  (This usually requires a little effort on your part and later I will show you how to do it).
• Make it easy for potential customers to learn about you.  This is much easier to do today than it was 15 or more years ago.  Today it can be as simple as a well designed professional website.

The better you are at what you do and the better known you are for it, the more easily and quickly you will attract business.  You should limit your business to those things you do best or take the time to master those things you don’t do best well before venturing on your own. 

We will discuss this more in number 2, tomorrow.

If you are like most of the growing ranks of the self-employed, you probably do not think of yourself as having a sales personality.  Most likely you dislike having to sell and even dread it.  But you are good at what you do and that is why you went into business in the first place.  And you know that if you can’t get enough business fast enough and regularly enough, you are doomed to go back to work for someone else.

So you are determined to find practical, effective ways to attract a steady flow of business, and you would rather have it come to you that have to go out and get it.

Over my 35 years as being self employed, I know how you feel.  I have had dry spells that tempted me to just go find a job.  Many times I wondered why I do what I do.  There are many lean times. 

Through the years, I have learned that having plenty of business is not a matter of luck!  The one word that most of us lack (or are afraid of) is marketing.  Marketing refers to all the activites involved in making sure you have enough business coming through your doors and that it keeps coming in.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, when I was watching my father run his business and even when I bought my first business, I didn’t even know what marketing meant.

When I learned that my first business was on the verge of bankruptcy, I quickly learned that I had to generate sales FAST if I were to survive as self-employed.  I also learned quickly that much of what was written and taught about marketing and how to get business didn’t apply to me!  Most information was geared towards large companies with budgets for TV, Radio, newspaper, direct mail, etc.

With no funds for market research, a sales force, and an advertising and public relations budget, I didn’t have much choice.  (When I bought the business, I thought it was successful enough to support me… I didn’t even have funds to live on)!

Let me tell you, that over the years I have either developed on my own or found other marketing tools and tricks that is perfect for self-employed.

Let me finish this post by saying that I found if you try to do what the big boys do, you may be on your way to failure.  It takes the simple tools and tricks that cost little or no money to beat the competition!

One of the first things a new SCORE client will ask me is: “What have you done that qualifies you to be a SCORE counselor?”

Fair question.  Let me answer that question before I move on to helping small businesses get more business.

At the age of 10, I became involved in the “Family Business”.  My dad ran a grocery store and we lived in the back.  This was not the first family business my father owned, but the first one I became involved in (other than the family farm).

Through my growing up years, I watched my father run the business.  Even though it was years later before I knew what marketing was, I watched him perform marketing and customer service.  He would do some things in both areas that other grocery stores and other businesses would not do for their customers.  He had a very loyal following of customers.  When the big grocery chains would have big sales and under price my father, those clients still remained faithful.  They knew that a good deal was more that just a cheap price!

By the time I turned 21, I was ready to go out on my own.  I found a small print shop that was for sale and bought it with my savings.  The seller saw me coming!  On paper the company looked fantastic…. in reality it was near bankruptcy! 

The first month after I took it over, it grossed $645.00 in sales for  the whole month!  There was not enough gross profit to even pay the light bill.

I had spent all my money buying the business and had none left for marketing.  So I invented new ways to market that cost nothing or very little.  Within 3 months of very hard work, I had turned the company around and found a new love… making companies successful.

Since then, I have done the same thing to 18 businesses.  Many in different industries. After each was successful, I became bored with the day-to-day running of the business, so I sold them and started over again with a new business.

The fun thing was to find ways to build the business without spending lots of money.  I will show you many of the marketing tricks I have used over the years. 

I hope you come back to find how easy it can be to build your business into a success!

Last week I met with a SCORE client and counseled him with his business.  (SCORE is the Service Corps of Retired Executives and offers free counseling to small businesses).  As I was telling this client about my background, he was impressed that I had taken 18 companies from near bankruptcy to profitability in a relatively short amount of time.

He asked me all sorts of questions, like: Did you spend a lot of money on marketing to make them successful?  Did you have to hire experts to help you?  How did you cut costs and build sales to make them profitable?  And this last question I have thought about all week:  How can I do the same thing?

I spent over 4 hours with this new business owner.  I answered most of his questions and I have another appointment with him to answer more questions and to help him on the road to business success.  I regret that I can’t spend that much time with every business owner that needs help!

So over the next few weeks, in this blog, I will answer most of the questions that I usually get asked about how to get more customers come to you and your business.

I hope you join me and that I can help you some way.  If you have questions that I have not answered plain enough, feel free to email me at ron@globalmarketingplus.com.