Reason #1 why your marketing doesn’t work – You are using Big Business marketing rules. If you’re playing by their rules, you’re going to lose just about every time. Make up your own rules and you’ve got a better chance of your marketing working.
It’s a problem of penguins.
Marketing is noise – 1,000 penguins on a rock outcropping. It’s like white noise out there. What do I mean? The biggest competitor in the industry spends $1,000,000 on advertising and grosses $10,000,000 in revenues – a nice 1 to 10 return ratio. So we assume that if we spend $10,000, we’ll get $100,000 back – 1 to 10 – right? Wrong. Why? Because we’re focused on the wrong ratio.
Back to the penguins. Our $10,000 is fighting with their $1,000,000 for attention. They own 990 penguins all making noise for them, and our solution is to add 10 penguins to the same rock to make noise for us. Our penguins are drowned out every time.
And worse yet, we’re competing against everyone advertising in the medium we’re using, so it’s really tens of thousands of penguins against our 10. The marketing noise is deafening. We don’t stand a chance if we play by big business rules.
I met someone starting a small business who was about to put 100% of their $10,000 annual marketing budget into newspapers – a few penguins up against thousands. We got her to redirect the funds. (FYI – If you’ve got thousands of penguins or a paper with a unique niche, newspapers can work.)
Until they have a big enough budget to place more penguins on the rock, how could they spend that money better? Understand this: the two last words of a dying marketing program are “Me, too.” Everyone else is advertising in a certain medium, so I think I better be there, too. That seems reasonable, but is the best way to waste your money. Instead, ask yourself, “What could I do to make a noise where no one else is squawking?”
I do a weekly lunch workshop with 35-50 business leaders and once a quarter I’ll ask “Of the four major ways to market ourselves (advertising, direct marketing – including cold calls, public relations, relationship marketing) which one brings you the overwhelming majority of your clients?” If there are 40 people there, 39 answer “relationship marketing” and the other guy didn’t understand the question.
If you spend time and money building a network of gate-openers and raving fan clients, you win. The big guy with lots of money doesn’t have your relationship network and would never invest the time to create that network. Until you’re big enough to own a big “waddle” of penguins (yep, that’s a penguin herd), put your dough into relationships.
By creating your own marketing rules, you beat the big guy, because he actually can’t afford to play by your rules! All he can do is keep throwing money at the problem. And since you’re penguins aren’t on his rock, he’ll never beat you no matter how big his waddle is.
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That is an awesome summary Charles, the way I see it is to get your ten penguins and really look after them, then they will tell ten penguins, and eventually it is you that is making the right noise.
Carl,
Great summary. You really don’t need many relationships to start if you really take care of the ones you have. They will become raving fans and bring you more, and soon enough all the momentum is coming from them.
Excellent analogy Charles. Enjoyed that
Thanks for the feedback, Sheldon. Have a great start to the week!
Its truly said. If your marketing campaign is not focusing the target market, then its no use of investing on heavy market advertisements.
Dubia Property,
Couldn’t agree more. We see big companies do widespread marketing and think we should do that on a smaller business. We’re throwing good money after bad. The more we can narrow our market, the more customers we’re going to get – it’s counter-intuitive, but very important for the smaller business to get this right. Focus!
Charles,
You’re absolutely right. Starting off small even if you had a herd of penguins to do your marketing you probably wouldn’t be able to meet the demand if it actually came along. Far better to strategically deploy your limited troop of penguins (and your own time) developing those key business relationships to get you known in your particular sector.
Paul
Paul. Too true – the biggest reason small businesses fail is actually that they grow too fast. Growing your business at a reasonable rate by “strategically deployed” resources is a much better strategy!
Chuck Blakeman,
Sorry I am unable to get the point of throwing money on bad. I believe that the more niche market you focus, more successful your business is. What about you?
Dubai,
Sorry – the “good money after bad” is an American analogy. It means we spend money on something that doesn’t work (that’s badly spent money), so our response is to spend more money doing the same thing. Hope that helps!