Up Market |
- Marketing Narcissism, or, One Of The Biggest Risks Small Business Owners Take
- Learn Online Marketing – Resources
- Cubicle, Home Sweet Cubicle
- How to Succeed by Failing
| Marketing Narcissism, or, One Of The Biggest Risks Small Business Owners Take Posted: 29 Jan 2012 09:00 AM PST
Joe is a dedicated small business owner. He's grown from a mobile bike repair service to a neighborhood bicycle shop, where he has managed to cater to a great demographic mix of competitive, transportation, and recreational cyclists. To understand the importance of this client mix one has to understand the nature of the bicycle business: people who buy bicycles at a bicycle shop buy there because they expect better value on both the equipment and personal service. Typically, this kind of cyclist is fairly loyal to a shop. Good equipment needs maintenance, and, who better to maintain it than someone who understands and uses the same equipment? Enter Joe. The guy rides 20 mi. (yes, that's twenty miles) to and from his shop every day. He also races mountain bikes. And he is an outstanding bicycle mechanic. If one is going to trust a good bicycle to anyone, this guy is it. Throughout his business growth, he's kept his prices low by keeping his overhead low. In this age of gigantic competition from online retailers, bicycle shops have a hard time fighting this battle. Like many small business owners, Joe is in it to win it. When he set up shop, he looked for a neighborhood that was surrounded by streets with bicycle lanes, close to a large university, and neighborhoods full of affluent, hip, environmentally aware, and outdoorsy families. These are the people that buy bikes and bicycle trailers, and would rather pay someone else to repair a bicycle than do it themselves. Smart move. In terms of Marketing, Joe has the Product (a.k.a. Offering), Price, and Place figured out. There Are At Least Four Marketing P's Fact: most people don't need to hit the bicycle shop every week. Sometimes not for months. When cyclists need a new set of tires, or a drive-train part, they shop around. The Product is determined by the buyer's preference and application, and, given a set of parameters, the number of options is real low, making each brand and model within a niche almost indistinguishable from another. Only Service, an important part of the Offering, can be a major differentiator. The Price has been commoditized by the Internet. Save for extreme urgency, Place is almost irrelevant (online pricing with two-day shipping is still competitive with the local bike shop). In this environment, the one thing left that a local small business has in order to succeed is Promotion, the fourth "P" and often neglected part of marketing. My Conversation With Joe Joe is not a fictional character, by the way. We ride together on occasion, and this conversation happened just over a week ago. He was telling me how he sponsors a racing team; how he contributes products to be given away ("swag") to volunteers at races and other events by the local mountain bike club. Joe gives generously. He was telling me how he is disappointed at the poor support his shop has seen from these groups in exchange for his generosity. Joe doesn't understand why these people won't go buy from him when they need a new tire, chain, drive-train part, etc. I know this guy, and I like him. And i want him to succeed. So I called him on the spot: Joe Suffers Marketing Narcissism. If you Google it you'll see Marketing Narcissism means slightly different things to different people, but, in short it's self-absorption in marketing. I'm a small business owner myself. I know what happens. Your business is your life, you universe. Your friends tell you "how cool" what you're doing is. Your friends’ friends tell you "Yeah, sure, they heard about it", and pretty soon, it feels like the entire world knows about your business. Except your world is not the entire world. Not even close. Are You Top-Of-Mind? The thing is, attention spans are at an all-time low. We have more information coming at us at the speed of light via our computers, mobile devices, TV, and even car systems, than we can humanly process. In order for buyers to think about your business when they need you, you must be their top-of-mind choice. According to Wikipedia: "Top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) is: When people think of you first to fulfill their product or service needs." How does Joe's small business achieve this? TV commercials? Local newspaper coupons? Yellow Page directories? Direct mail? These options are too expensive and almost impossible to keep track of. Limited in their reach, and too much like everyone else’s. The Great Equalizer The very thing that makes it hard to compete on price gives small businesses today an incredible opportunity to be the top-of-mind choice of their audience: The Internet. Online marketing (Social Media, Mobile/Local, Content Marketing) is an advanced form of word-of-mouth combined with networking. Cost is relatively low, potential for reward incredibly high. And the best news is, because of proximity (both physical and emotional) the small guy has the home-team advantage. You Can Do This Remember there are at least four "P"s to marketing. Don't pass up the opportunity to be the top-of-mind business for your audience because you neglected Promotion. Stay tuned to this column and we'll take you through simple, actionable ways you can beat marketing narcissism and use internet marketing to be top-of-mind. Photo Credit: Cea.  |
| Learn Online Marketing – Resources Posted: 29 Jan 2012 06:00 AM PST Check out these resources for the new or developing online marketer.  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2012 03:00 PM PST A little history of the ever-present cubicle and some ideas for personalizing your own.  |
| Posted: 28 Jan 2012 12:00 PM PST
Same with marriages. You got married, and stayed married, no matter what. Life is different now. We often have to start, stop, go back a few steps, hang a left, and then start over. The key is not to avoid failure (we can’t); but to “embrace it” and learn from it. Here are three stories of starting over. When Greg Digneo was laid off from his engineering job, he decided to start a new company with $500. The thing that sticks out about Greg is that he churns through ideas quickly. If one doesn’t work, he tries another, and another, until he’s got something that works. And, he knows when to ask for advice too. After some fits and starts, his sales lead generating business is going strong. In just a couple of years, he’s gone from a standing start to a business that employs 15 people. Patty Newbold was miserable. She was frustrated and unhappy about her marriage, and all the ways her needs weren’t being met. She wanted a divorce. Then her husband died, and she realized she wasn’t any happier than she had been before. She recognized that while listening to your spouse is important, it’s also important to listen to yourself— and how you react when your spouse says or does something. Patty decided to help other unhappy couples to “Assume Love.” She’s now a top marriage blogger and was recently featured in Working Mother magazine. After Pat Ferdinandi lost her tech job, she didn’t quite know what to do. She started one business (about her beloved parrots), but when that foundered, she started a video coaching company called Viditude. She taught herself how to use video to market herself (and her clients). Her seven-step process will help you get more engagement, stand out on YouTube, and bring your customer testimonials to life. Image thanks to Airin  |
I'm going to share with you the story of Joe The Bike Shop Owner.
Forty years ago you were expected to get a job and stay with the same company for most of your life. That was the contract; you worked, you got a steady paycheck, regular raises, and then you retired after 25 or 30 years with a party and a gold watch.| You are subscribed to email updates from Upmarket To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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