… And The Two Things That Every Business Should Be Investing In
burgers and dogs.
I know why you do it. I used to do it myself.
You post self-styled ‘ads’ to a number of online community groups throughout the week. You seek a new customer, maybe two by posting about your latest special, deal, offer, or product. You may have decent sales pitch attached to it, maybe even a link to a landing page to capture a lead.
You may get engagement on your posts every now and then, someone who leaves a comment saying, ‘interested’, or ‘how much’, or ‘i need your services’, but the majority of the time, you don’t receive anything by way of likes, comments or (God forbid) shares. But, since you received engagement on a past post, you tell yourself that you must not be doing those right. Maybe by posting at a different time, or posting more frequently, or posting it into more groups will get you the results you want — you know, trying to make up the difference in volume.
You may even entertain the thought of building an ad campaign to get new customers from a new niche of people that don’t know you. As you probably already know, finding leads this way all by itself can quickly become costly to get the clients you are looking for, since the big boys you compete with have so much more money than you do.
I get it. You don’t have a lot of money to begin with, so you need to make the most with what you do have — time.
The Trouble With This
But the trouble with this approach (and with most small businesses in general), is that those people that you are ‘advertising’ yourself to don’t know who you are, much less CARE about what it is you do, or what it is you are selling. They don’t know you, they don’t trust you, and they may not even CARE to know you or trust you.Sales pitches to all of these people are ALWAYS going to be more difficult to get results than selling to someone who already, knows, likes and trusts you. And in this case, trying to sell to a group (or multiple groups) of strangers is probably one of the least efficient ways to grow your business.
What you may not realize is that in a successful business, that OVER HALF of the business is actually from REPEAT customers. Also, a good percentage of new customers actually come from WORD-OF-MOUTH, recommendations, and reviews from friends (stats put this specific estimate to about 10-20% of all new business – sources).
In a facebook group full of strangers, you have few actual relationships to build a business on. Of course it’s going to be difficult to build a business on marketing activity like that.
Believe it or not, it’s not good to primarily focus on getting new business!
What To Do Instead
To market your business successfully, you need to completely change the way you look at your business. You need to focus on building relationships with your people first — you need to focus on adding value, creating friendships, and getting your clients the results they want.
Your customers should be your primary focus — If you invest in them, and they will reward your business in spades… They’ll tell their friends about you, they’ll write 5-star reviews, they’ll leave a friendly response when you post online…. When you have a new offer or a new product, these guys’ll be the most likely to be the first in line to purchase from you.
These people are your MVC (most valuable clients), as they are the reason you will be able to succeed now and into the future.
Having a good web hosting service is also quite important,
Out of all of things inside your business that you can invest in, I can confidently say that it is most important to invest in two things: your Brand, and your Distribution Channels. I’ll break them down for our purposes here–
Build Your Brand
Your Brand brings all of your offers together cohesively under a recognizable, attractive and trustworthy company. Each of your offers should be seen as trustworthy, valuable, and of high quality. Your brand is your legacy. It is what people think of when they see your logo, your social media, your website, or see your products.
I’ve been doing branding for long enough to know that this is one of those things that many people think they can ignore.
The thing is, they can’t. It is their entire business.
If your legacy is not something you are proud of, chances are, your customers may not be proud of it either. Think about it — is it a good idea to try to grow a business that may look like it is sick from the outside? Will they go out of their way to tell their friends and family about you?
Probably not.
If you take a hold of your Brand, you can literally begin to guide your customers perceptions of you, which helps you to establish and and even build loyalty within your followers.
I don’t care who you are, but achieving loyalty from your customers is a pretty good start.
Let’s move on over into…
Build Your Distribution Channels
Your Distribution Channels are what drive your sales! They are your Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat followers, they are your blog and email list subscribers, they are the paying subscribers for your membership website. Using a highly efficient and highly engaged Distribution Channel can almost infinitely lower the cost of launching a new product, generating buzz in a new offer, driving traffic to a new landing page / sales funnel, get feedback on a new idea, and because of all of this, also can heavily increase the real potential to SCALE your business into the stratosphere.
A Distribution Channel is made up of fans of your Brand… Fans of your brand can come in many forms: those who admire your work, those who are satisfied customers, those who are considering buying from you, those that are looking to connect with you, those that want to learn from you, etc.
What’s important to note is that ALL of these people are people with a relationship of sorts with you and your Brand. If you are not invested in building up relationships with these people, you are ignoring literally 50-70% potential revenue for your business — and massive potential to vastly decrease the cost of advertising your new offers and deals (because you sell it to an already warm-to-hot audience).
If you don’t get it by now, a solid Distribution Channel is the ultimate leveraged audience.
This is how you compete with the big boys — You build a highly engaged tribe of followers that looks forward to everything that you post and offer.
Back To You
How are you doing with these two things? Are you building your Brand? Are you building your Distribution Channels? What is working for you so far? What could you use some help with?
I’d love to hear more about it in the comments.
Additionally, if you would like more detailed and more involved help and advice, feel free to set up a time to chat with me using my ultra-nifty scheduler link.
See you in the comments. 🙂