Applying Leverage To Beat Bigger Competitors

As football coach, if you give me a slight, 150 pound running back and I can show him how to block a 300 pound charging linebacker. It’s the same as in your business…It’s all about how you apply leverage to what you have!

I can be awfully intimidating when you look across the line and see a man twice your size waiting to knock you out. But when you understand the fundamentals and have confidence in your abilities, it is inevitable that you will defeat this bigger, badder opponent.

All it takes is positioning yourself so you can apply leverage to his weakest point.

There is no such thing as a perfect product or service that has the ability to appeal to everyone in the market. It just doesn’t happen. You can be as big and strong as Nike, McDonalds, or Starbucks but you will always have a weakness that can be attacked and exploited by savvy and more nimble entrepreneurs – like you.

Even if you are facing well established competitors with deep pockets, you can defeat them by attacking their weak points and leveraging your strengths. That’s what winning the marketing game is all about…Scoring the most sales by better positioning your offer as the obvious, risk free choice to prospects, clients and customers.

You can defeat that 300pound linebacker you face in your market just by leveraging your strengths against the vulnerable gaps in their marketing. It all starts with your strategies, tactics, and techniques!

You Can’t Win With the “Build and They Will Come” Strategy

“Build it and they will come.”

This famous quote from the movie “Field of Dreams” may work in the movies but it rarely is the basis of creating a business.

I recently met with an entrepreneur who has spent countless hours and a load of cash remodeling a building to open his dream business. He called me to design a logo for him because that’s what his ideas of marketing is – a logo to “get the name out there.”

At the end of our meeting I asked him a simple question that resulted in a puzzled look on his face…“Do you have a marketing plan?”

He admitted that he didn’t have one and said, “I’ll do fine. Were the only game in town and I’ve talked to a lot of people who will do business with me when we open.”

How many is a lot? Fifty…a hundred…five hundred? My guess would be around a hundred.

I then asked him if he had a strategy to turn those people into repeat customers who buy on a regular basis. He said, “No, our product s so good that they will come back again.”

To which I replied, “What happens when you get an unhappy customer and they tell their friends about their bad experience?” He answers, “Oh well, I guess we’ll have to find another customer.”

I could have gone on but it was very clear that he doesn’t understand he must play the marketing game.

This is a classic example of the “Build it and they will come” trap.

The business owner is so in convinced that his dream is so wonderful that people will beat a path to his door without any marketing effort. He is sure that he has a large group of prospects that will purchase out of the goodness of their heart over and over again.

They also believe that no competition exists in their market. There’s always someone to compete with! It may not be in his industry selling the same product or service, but there is another business that is trying to get their attention. If he doesn’t put forth any effort in attracting them, how will they find his business?

And finally, if he lose a customer and has no marketing system to replace them, how can he sustain his business? Marketing is the only way to ensure that he has a sustainable flow of new prospects entering his doors and buying his products.

Yes, he can build it and they may show up when he opens, but the only thing that will keep them coming back is marketing. And without a marketing plan the chances are pretty good that he is not going to be around very long.

“Build it and they will come” works in a fantasy movie, but in the real world of business it’s a strategy that has no chance of winning.

To get out of the fantasy world and focused on real life marketing solutions - click here to discover a valuable tool that shows you how!

To all your marketing victories,

Coach Ron

Absurd? Or Brilliant Marketing?

‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’

‘Give the people what they want.’

These two clichés are part of marketing lore. But as I flipped through my local Sunday paper, I wonder which one applies to an ad that caught my attention. I can’t figure it out: has my highly esteemed, pillar of journalism excellence (note the sarcasm) become “snake oil salesmen” or have they had an epiphany of brilliant marketing?

You decide…

The ad was featured in the “Milestones” section of the paper which features weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and achievements. They recently began printing this in color and placing it as the insert cover for all of the coupon ads, flyers and comics…you know the stuff that makes lifting the paper your workout for the day due to it's 20 pound weight.

As you can see, this ad featured a photo of a happy looking dog with the caption of “Happy Birthday Bella!” Under that was the headline – “Give a pet a greeting!” Hmm, a birthday greeting to a dog in the Sunday paper…either we have some smart dogs in Ann Arbor or this is just plain stupid – weird – funny – brilliant – absurd.

I guess, deciding on which adjective that best describes it depends on your perspective.

So being a student of marketing I began analyzing it in terms of the motivation and needs of both the buyer and the seller. The paper of course is a commercial enterprise on a quest to turn a profit (nah, they are in business to provide a vital public service… yeah right). They are basically selling space on a page to individuals that have a need to inform others or experience having their picture in the paper. For many, seeing ones photo or name in the paper is the 15 minutes of fame that they were promised.

The pet owner’s motivations are a little more personal and passionate. To some, a pet is their main companion in life; it’s their spouse, child and best friend rolled into one hairy four legged creature. As such, they project their emotional needs onto the pet. And sending a personal birthday greeting to Fido or Fluffy makes perfect sense.

Forget about the fact that ANIMALS CAN’T READ, that’s irrelevant.

The newspaper is merely filling a fundamental need that pet owners have to make their pets more “human.” Your could get into a lot of deep psychological gunk here, but the fact remains that some pet owners will spring for the $35 to wish their dog happy birthday. Now, it's brilliant marketing if you’re the newspaper selling ink on paper and might find it stupid if you don’t have a pet.

So, I believe the marketing lesson here is that a combination of the two at work – some people tend to be suckers and you must give them what they want. It is the emotional connection with their pet which will drive the sale and the newspaper understands this. I'm sure that this has concept has been done before in other media with great success.

But rest assured - if this pet message thing gets out of hand your local news reporter will inform us that people are getting ripped off by unscrupulous marketers! Or, will they, if they’re the dastardly culprits taking grandma’s money?

Commit to Consistency

What can you do to improve your marketing? Committing to consistency and repetition is the best and most profitalbe way. Failing to be consistent with the message quality and frequency can put all of your marketing efforts at risk. Inconsistencies can confuse prospects and clients to the point where they don’t fell comfortable with your company.

It is very common that business owners will fall into a trap of believing that they can run marketing offers once in awhile. They run ads one week and don’t run them again because the ads didn’t meet their expectations. They forget or are ignorant to the fact that frequency is a major factor in marketing success.

Sometimes they get lucky and find a message that works and draws in a little new business. With this success in hand, they often become complacent and pull back their marketing because they believe the success will continue from this one victory. They forgot that the only constant in business is change and, without marketing, eventually business will slow down.

They will become their own worst enemy by not continuing to consistently capitalize on the message that worked. They have the best intentions to market on a regular basis; however, because of a lack of planning they throw an advertisement here or there. This small business marketing strategy only lead to minimal results and wasted dollars invested. Only a consistent deliver can create outstanding marketing results.

Constantly and Relentlessly Market Your Business

Being constant is another key component of this principle. As we touched on earlier, repetition brings marketing success. Creating an impression takes many, many exposures to your message. That’s exactly why you will see or hear the same annoying commercial over and over. Even though it may annoy you, it’s doing its job by leaving a significant impression on you.

Adopting a constant posture in your marketing doesn’t mean sticking with one tactic using a single delivery method. It is important to take your clear and consistent message and spread it through other forms of delivery to the same target, intelligently. A prime example of this is the discount department stores. You see their ads on TV, hear their radio spots, receive their direct mail coupons, and find their inserts in your newspaper. They make themselves ubiquitous in your life through a constant barrage of marketing messages aimed only at you to take action. You may not always give them your full attention, but they leave an impression that is part of your decision making process.

Being constant is the twin sister of being relentless. Never giving up is a virtue of successful small business marketing strategy. Those who get discouraged and fall into the incompetence trap don’t become successful. It’s that simple. What only pays is a dogged determination that moves a business forward and marketing is no exception.

To be relentless doesn’t mean being rude or overbearing. It is simply keeping your product and service offering tastefully in front of the prospects and clients without intruding. This can be a delicate balancing act for any marketer. You want to be familiar without being obnoxious.

These four qualities of clear, consistent, constant and relentless each interconnect to give you a solid principle that will allow you to spread your benefits to those who matter most…your clients and prospects. All it takes is saying the same thing, say it the same way, say it often, and don’t give up saying it.

Learn more at the Small Business Marketing Hub