How to Market Your Business
Let’s talk about how to market your business. Everyone knows the different mediums that are out there and the big buzz word is social media at the moment. The truth is it is a fantastic medium to market your business but is it the right medium for you? Now I don’t know the business you’re in and if I did, that would be creepy because I haven’t met you and if I have met you and you’re watching my podcast, thank you very much. Share it with your friends. Nevertheless, I don’t know the business that you’re in most likely so you need to try and work out what’s the best medium for you.
Two Styles of Business
Now there are two main styles of business. There’s the business to business businesses and then there is the business to consumer businesses. Business to business businesses don’t benefit from Facebook advertisement, but LinkedIn is fantastic. Having said that, LinkedIn is terrible for business to consumer businesses. Now your average business to consumer businesses, you know fish and chip shops, hairdressers, shopping centres, and anything really that has the end user as a customer, is fantastic for Facebook. The reason for this is people jump on Facebook to see and hear from their friends and what’s happening around the world, and a lot of the time let’s say you had a hair salon and you are advertising on Facebook, people want to see people that look beautiful and go oh yeah, that’ll work, that’ll look nice for me. Then you can obviously use that medium to be able to bring people into your shop. You might find that depending on the style of business that you have, Facebook and LinkedIn might not be the method of choice.
When Not to Use Internet Advertising
A good example of that would be at this moment I wouldn’t say if you had a funeral parlour it would be a great choice for either of those. A funeral parlour would be much better off advertising in the newspapers and on ABC Radio and the reason for that is the target audience that they have are going to be more likely attracted to those sources. You don’t generally get your 80-year nanas jumping on Instagram and swiping and liking. For the most part, you’d be wasting your money jumping across onto those pages.
There Is Always Caveats
Now having said that, there’s always these caveats and changes and bits and pieces. For instance, a photographer. A photographer would make a lot of money if they’re doing photography for weddings and so on and so forth. They’d make a great deal of money advertising through Facebook as opposed to LinkedIn, but if they just open up one extra product and they start selling through LinkedIn and that product is professional portraits for your LinkedIn profiles or signatures, instantly they’ve got a new customer base that their current customers may not be in. That means there’s new fresh meat to sink their teeth into. There are lots of different ways that you can pivot the way that your business looks to make sure that who you’re marketing to is an appropriate audience as well as an appropriate audience that’s listening to the message that you have to say.
Make Your Message Be Heard
The last thing you want is to have your message fall on deaf ears. If you’re talking to a bunch of people about something that’s not related to them, they’re not going to be interested. Selling condoms to a nun or any sort of contraceptives is not going to be a sensible idea and I use that analogy because it doesn’t make any sense. You can continue to talk to her as much as you want about prophylactics but they’re not going to go in and buy them. You need to make sure that you know your customers, you know where they shop, and you know how you’re going to go about marketing to them. As I said, there’s always that opportunity, such as a photographer on LinkedIn where they’re able to make money from more than one stream by just advertising a slightly different product.
Facebook Is Best for Consumer Business
The great news is if you are a business to consumer business, you have this fantastic world of Facebook where there are lots and lots of people and really granular ways to dive in and dissect the exact audience that you want to find your A grade customer. If you’re able to do that and you find the person that you want through the methods of Facebook, it can give you a world of customers. You need to make sure though you are standing out enough because when it comes down to it you’re advertising, people don’t like advertisers.
Remember Advertising Is Crowded
There’s more than 300 different forms of advertisement in the physical world not when you’re looking in front of a screen, be it your mobile phone or computer, that you’re bombarded with every day. That’s just when you’re walking out and about if you get away from your screens. Can you imagine how many you’re seeing on the screens themselves? Thousands, so you really need to stand out. Be a bit cheeky with the way that you market. Have an offering that is genuine and heartfelt and really pulls people in. If you’re able to do that, the advertising will work for itself and you don’t really have to work anywhere near as hard as what you would have if you’re just putting up a post saying hey, please let us do your wedding photography. That’s no good. You need to really show a point of difference and a reason for your customers to jump in. You don’t know your customers might be cheap asses, they might be really, really ritzy. It doesn’t matter, what’s important is the way that you position yourself accordingly so that people can and are attracted to that business model.
Choose Your Speciality
There’s a great analogy that I’ve used many times which is the hot water system specialist. It’s a guy that jumps into your house and replaces your hot water system. Now he’s a fully fledged plumber but what he does is he specialises in hot water systems and so all of his marketing is around hot water systems and that is his lead in or his trip wire offer, as it would be called. When someone jumps in to get a hot water system, they then have his contact details, see all the other things that he’s done, and he knows the face value. The effort and support that he puts into his business and the relationships build them themselves. He doesn’t have to tell everyone that he can replace washers for your taps and everything else, he can just jump straight in and do that and they then have the contact details, he’s built the relationship. That’s what important. Separate out all the fodder and make sure that the way that you’re relaying your message is seen and heard by the people and is landing on the ears that people want to hear.
Our Example
As an example for us, we have several different methods of marketing. We market as a business to business business, we market through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google, iTunes, Spotify, our blog on our website, and they all work for a different reason. That’s a much, much longer conversation that would take away from what we’re talking about today which is how to advertise your business.
The Final Word
If you want any questions answered on how to do that, make sure to send us an e-mail at [email protected] and talk to you for a few minutes about how we can make your business work better for you. Stay good.
