(Disclaimer: This article was not written by the administrator but was seen to be a vital piece worth sharing).
What is the biggest challenge every business owners faces? No need to burst a vein guessing. I’ll tell you for free. It’s…
MARKETING
Selling. Finding clients and getting them to buy, and not just buy, but getting them to buy enough times so that your business become profitable and you can use the proceeds to fulfill those lofty dreams you have – buy the nice house, drive the luxury cars, vacations in the world nicest spots, travel in style, etc.But here’s the scenario that happens with the typical business person.
First, they start a business, then they do the bare minimum like – create social media accounts because you see, the mantra every business “guru” is chanting today is: “everyone is on social media”! Then they take beautiful pictures of their logo, their product, their office and plaster it everywhere, because they want to…
BRAND!
Wow, branding!They chant about branding like a congregation of Celestial Church choirs competing to see which group will beat the drums the loudest. They spend more and more of the limited budget they have so that they get “seen”. Because you see that’s what they learned in Orange Academy. That’s what they learned in Lagos Business School. That’s what they learnt at the business seminar their church organized.
You must “brand” your business, they were told, otherwise their business won’t work. They are sold on the lie that once you brand your business, then customers will come.
That’s like saying, if a woman paints her lips bright red, wear 10 inch high heels with a short skirt and walks around a mall, by the time she’s leaving a long line of potential husbands will follow her home. We know that’s a lie as sure as branding bringing you customers is a lie, especially for small business owners.
But let me back up a bit, let me tell you a story, a story that I am sure will resonate with you because you will see lots of yourself in it.
The year was 2008. I had recently left University and started my own business. Miraculously and by grunt work, I had managed to turn start-up capital of =N=690 into about two million naira.
I had started by burning e-books on CDs and selling them at seminar venues and then writing my own e-books and selling them off different websites. I was giddy with confidence and felt like I could floor any business owner I wanted to, Aliko Dangote inclusive.
And to do this, I decided I need to make things happen.
So I took my two million naira, got an office off Toyin Street, Ikeja, printed the most beautiful call cards ever, shopped selling e-books, hired staff and started my consulting firm.
6 months later, I was struggling. My business was going nowhere, I was bleeding money faster than a gunshot wound to the head, and I had not gotten one client.
But guess what I had?
A fancy office complete with a mahogany desk and a suit hanger on the side! I had fancy complimentary cards. I had a really cute logo that had been designed so well, I could tell you what the slightest curve on it meant.
The business’ life was ebbing away slowly because I was doing the wrong thing. I was branding instead of marketing. I was being a business fool.
Let’s Talk About Branding.
When business experts tell you to brand, what they are telling you in essence is to convey a unique image that will attract potential people. They want you to look professional, they want you to be prim and proper. They say you need to be seen. They are quick to mention tell you that it puts you in a unique category, then they mention luxury companies, like Dolce&Gabbana or global names like Coca-Cola as examples.
Surely branding has it’s place but for a small business, that aims to grow and move up fast, when “brand consultants” ask you to focus your efforts on branding
They Knowingly Forget To Mention These Three Very Important Facts
1. It takes a lot of time for branding to “kick in” and have an effect on sales.
It took years, in many cases, hundreds of years, for these companies to become established in the mind . Branding never ever kicks in UNTIL the market trusts that you can deliver a satisfactory product. You cannot just go out and brand yourself and then think that because of that customers will flock to you. They won’t. They will only do so when they have seen you long enough or associated you with the people they admire which is why some companies hire “brand ambassadors”.
Branding a new business, especially a small business that doesn’t have a lot of money in it’s budget is putting the cart before the horse. Like a baby trying to run before it crawls. Don’t do it.
2. It costs a whole lot of money to “brand” yourself. For the small business owner, branding is expensive. Coca-cola and any other global and luxury brands you have heard of from the get-go spent humongous amounts of money
It costs A LOT of money to do all the “expensive” things branding requires and spending money on things that are not directly linked to bringing in profits into your business - a cute logo, cards, billboards e.t.c - is being foolhardy.
These things take way money from you rather than bring it in. A small business has no business branding the way it is preached by “brand consultants” in Nigeria, it simply cannot afford it.
3. That you build a brand name doesn’t mean your target customers want to buy it.
Here’s an example.
In the 1990’s the only milk you could get was Peak Milk, Nido, Carnation and one or two. If you wanted Milk, you had to buy it in a 500G tin or a 500 gram sachet or you bought the liquid version that you had to open, then tear out a part of the label to close up the hole.
Buying milk was expensive and it was messy. Until a company called, Promasidor came along. It looked at the market and thought, “Surely, a whole lot more people would buy milk and buy it more often if it was made cheaper”. So they put it in little sachets of varying sizes and sold them for between 5% - 7% of what the others sold for.
And Boom! Sales Took Off!
They made so much money and sold so many sachets of milk the other big milk companies, like Nestle e.t.c. were forced to also start copying them as they started losing market share.
What’s the point of this story?
It’s to point out that a lot of times, the people who want to buy your product may not care about branding. They just want a cheap easy to access product. If you give it to them, they will buy it.
But does all this mean you should never ever do branding? I didn’t say so,
Here’s What To Do Instead…
Think of BRANDING as a by-product. It should happen as a result of what you do in the business – which should be you focusing on creating a stellar product, finding the right customers, and delivering a wonderful experience that you get paid the right amount of money for.
Then when you have made enough money, then you can create the “right” logo and do whatever “brand” stuff you want to do.
So what should you do instead of branding?
Market. Sell.
Marketing and sales are the two most important jobs of a business owner. Marketing is everything you do that convinces a potential customer to buy your product/service. Sales is having them pay for it, and the experience you deliver AFTER they have done so. “But, Ronald, I am already marketing,” you say. “I just don’t see the results I hope for.”
If this is you, here’s my answer: You’re marketing in a vacuum, and it’s killing you and killing your business.
If you’re not getting results, the kind of results you want, there are three main reasons why and here they are:
i. You’re not targeting the right customers.
It amazes me when I see people trying to sell a product to a market that doesn’t need it and worse doesn’t want it. And this happens because they choose to sell a product or a service without doing due diligence. They don’t ask pertinent questions like: Do the people I am trying to sell this product to want it?
If this is what you are doing, you will fail, PERIOD. There’s no two ways about it.
People will never buy what they do not want. No amount of spending, persuasion or mind tricks will change it. You yourself will not spend money to buy something you do not want, why would you expect someone else to?
ii. You are not giving the market what (the exact kind of product/service) the market wants to buy For example, if you want to sell a weight loss product to overweight women, what would you think will sell better and faster? A set of bench press weight lifts exercise equipment? or Herbal weight loss tea?
If you said it’s the herbal weight loss tea, you’re correct.
Why is that?
Because overweight women have specific desires, irritations, preferences, and mindsets and all of this influence the choice of products they buy.
Overweight people HATE exercising. It’s painful so they resent it.
As an alternative they go for products that promise the same results of exercise/gym equipment but without the pain and this is the reason weight loss teas, supplements, patches, e.t.c outsell exercise and gym equipment and always will.
Every target market also has it’s peculiar idiosyncrasies and you have to learn what they are, and channel these into the product you want to sell and the things you say to them to get them to buy it.
iii. You’re looking for customers and clients in the wrong places If you’re a fisherman (and a business owner is essentially fishing) and you want to catch a lot of fish, the first requirement of fishing is, YOU MUST BE FISHING IN THE RIGHT POND! Otherwise, you will be casting your net in the sea all day and like Peter and his fellow disciples as recorded in the Bible, you will catch nothing.
And the truth is most business owners, maybe including you, are casting their nets in the wrong pond and failing spectacularly.
So what’s the solution?
Introducing...
The Triangle Of Profit
Think of marketing as a three-legged stool. If even only one leg is missing, the entire stool falls down because without all three of them, it cannot stand. The triangle of profits is a three-legged simplified marketing system that helps you identify the right target market, creates the right messaging for that market and singles out the different places where that market gather, so the messaging can be presented to them.In simple terms, this means, you MUST
• find the right prospects for your product,
• talk to them with the right messaging that penetrates their defenses and skepticism and
• present that message in the exact places they congregate, online or offline.
When you do this correctly, your business will rake in profits like clockwork at a rate that will amaze you.
At this point, it will be like a money a money doubling machine. You put =N=1 in and you get =N=2 back, or =N=3 or =N5, =N=7 or more.
And automatically,
1. You stop being afraid to spend money on advertising because you know that the money you spend will come back with more “children”.
2. You stop being stressed out because now you’re assured and 100% confident you can pay your bills, meet your obligations and responsibilities. You feel renewed and it seems like a new source of energy just flowed back into your life. You stop feeling stuck. You have a renewed sense of purpose. Each morning you cannot wait to get up and become productive. You have more free time.
3. You become HAPPIER because you can finally feel yourself moving steadily and speedily towards fulfilling your lofty dreams and realizing your big audacious goals. You can finally take that vacation you’ve already wanted, buy that dream house, the dream car, put your children in the best schools, Live The Good Life!
Now, who in their right mind wouldn’t want all of this and more?
But it all start with your business' Triangle. If it’s out of whack, if one leg is bent or broken, you will fail and keep failing. But if it’s in sync? You will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
And that’s what I learned Unless all three legs of your marketing system are solid, your business will be ineffective and will take a fall.
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