Is your small business marketing standing out?
Are you getting a constant stream of new enquiries and leads?
I’m going to show you how minimising your message will maximise your marketing and generate more sales.
If you’ve ever watched Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” series you will have seen many long, complicated menus replaced with shorter, simple versions.
Fewer dishes on the menu means:
- Less stress in the kitchen
- Less ingredients to order, stock and waste
- Less for waiting staff to learn
- Better overall customer experience
Simplifying how you present your products and services isn’t just a great lesson for restaurants, it’s a lesson for all small business marketing.
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
Keeping your small business marketing simple helps:
- concentrate your focus
- customers see how you can help
- makes it easy for staff to explain
- makes it easy for existing customers to refer you
To keep your small business marketing simple you need to focus on four things:
Who You Are
People like to buy from people.
As a small business owner you have a massive advantage over larger businesses because you can focus on building strong customer relationships.
Don’t be afraid to show your personality through your marketing. �Tell your story, explain why you’re in business and what part of your experience makes you different from everyone else.
People need to get to know and like you before they’ll trust you enough to make a purchase. �If they can’t see enough of you to like, they will find someone else.
Who You Help
You wouldn’t walk into an Italian restaurant and expect to order an Indian Curry, or Chinese Sweet & Sour Chicken at the local French fine-dining establishment.
Small businesses can’t cater for everyone, you have to specialise.
Use your small business marketing to help people understand who you work with. �The closer you get to attracting the perfect clients the more you’ll enjoy being in business and you’ll see your small business grow.
How You Benefit Them
This is the most important part of small business marketing and the part that is often overlooked.
You need to ensure your prospective customer knows “what’s in it for me?”
You can have the best product and best price on the market, but if you’re prospective customer can’t recognise the benefit your sales will be terrible.
Every time you find yourself writing a “feature” of your product or services ask “so what?“. �For example my daughter’s eBook reader will hold thousands of books – so what? �The benefit is that she can take lots of books when we travel without carrying extra baggage and she has fewer books on her bedroom floor.
Whenever possible include customer testimonials in your marketing that show the impact of your products and services on other customers. �Always remember:
Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin
How They Take Action
Each individual piece of your small business marketing should lead to a response.
Whether it’s a letter, a website page, a social media profile, a flyer, a newspaper advertisement,�etc.�they should all ask the prospective customer to do one thing.
If you ask me to visit your website, “Like” you on Facebook and call you on the telephone all at the end of one advert I’m likely not to bother doing any, it’s too confusing.
If you have more information on your website that will help me know, like and trust you then tell me to go there, if you’ve given me lots of knowledge in the marketing and want me to talk to you on the telephone ask me to call you.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t have both your website and your telephone number on your marketing materials, you really should. �Just be clear on what you want me to do
The best small business marketing tells me about one thing per piece of marketing and asks me to do one thing when I’ve consumed it.
Summary
Keep your small business marketing simple. �Follow the Gordon Ramsay example and keep your customers coming back for more and bringing their colleagues, friends and family.
Focus on who you are, who you help, what benefit you bring and then give simple, clear steps for prospective customers to contact you and take the next step.
Free Prize
How simple is your small business marketing?
Go and look at your last piece of marketing and see how many of these you can find. �Please come back and tell me what you’d change next time by leaving a comment. �I’ll pick a comment at random with a number generator and review your next piece of marketing with you for free.
Photo Credit: Gordon Ramsay Holdings