“Once upon a time you could start a local business, provide great service and have loyal customers who would shop with you because you were their neighborhood service provider. It was a time of stability for business owners.
Then along came the internet and all the rules changed. Business owners experienced competition like never before. Consumers were drawn in by shiny promises of savings, discounts, freebies, and ease of having everything at the tip of their fingers.
Storefronts became unnecessary. The cost of starting up a business became so low, anyone could do it. And almost everyone started. The market place got very crowded very quickly…”
My friends this is the world in which you do business! Picture yourselves in a loud crowded room full of people and you are trying to call to your ideal clients. That is your reality! The good news for me, and you, is that the majority of the businesses out there are nothing more than noise. Very few people go the extra mile anymore, so if you know what to do, it is actually not that hard to stand out in the market place. It doesn’t matter if you are the only person on the planet that does what you do, or if you are one of thousands. How you communicate and show up for your perspective clients is what will make a world of difference!
- Have a message that is bigger than your product or service. Do you have a company mission statement? Do you have a brand promise? In a world of competition, loyalty comes from aligning missions. If you don’t know what you believe in and stand for, your customers really won’t know. Part of your marketing is letting prospective clients get to know what your brand stands for, not just the products you offer.
- Be ridiculously consistent at getting in front of your prospective clients. I meet a whole lot of entrepreneurs and if I were to pick the number one reason that their marketing isn’t gaining the traction they want, it’s inconsistency. You do a webinar when you feel like it. You send out emails to your list when you feel like it. And you do a vendor booth when someone invites you to. Get consistent! Come up with a plan that you can commit to and stick to it like glue! You need people seeing you on a regular and consistent basis!
Nurture every relationship. This is how most relationships in our crowded marketing place go. A business and prospective client connect. No one nurtures the relationship and the client forgets about the business. The end. Write yourself a new story! One where you nurture connections through automated and personal means. Yes, create autoresponder campaigns! But don’t stop there! Send a birthday card. Call them. Invite them to connect!- Let go of wanting to sell entirely online. I love the idea of earning thousands of dollars a month just by driving traffic to a landing page. Who wouldn’t? But think about how many landing pages there are on the internet. And think about how many of those high converting landing pages either have big names or big budgets attached to them. Most of them fit that bill. For the rest of us, who are establishing brands, or don’t want to put so much money into ranking on google, we need to be willing to sell offline. Practice your sales skills. Get people on the phone. Be willing to spend time every day connecting with potential clients. And I guarantee they will respond better than if you were only trying to run online sales campaigns. People are craving interaction. Give them some real life people time and watch as they respond in purchasing dollars and brand loyalty!
It doesn’t matter if you’re in a crowded industry. What matters is how you stand out in any crowd!