Today has been a bit of a bummer. Things are getting really hectic after the summer holidays, my to-do list is about a mile long, I am blogging way too late and sending the blog out, well, God knows when!
What now? [Read more…]
One bite at a time!
What happens in an hour?
One hour. 60 minutes. 3600 seconds. That’s one session at the gym. That is one TV show (with loads of ads). That’s one massage session – and not nearly enough! You can’t really do that much in an hour. Do you sell your time? Whether as a consultant, trainer, masseuse, teacher or whatever. Does it all work out? Do you buy an hour from someone? How much do you get out of that hour?
For a long time people have sold their time. When you get paid overtime you are getting paid by the hour. You get an x amount for your usual hours and y per hour above and beyond that. And if you have an employment contract with your company, that works. But if you are freelance, you need to sell quite a few hours and you have to sell them for a fair amount – and still have time to market yourself, keep your books etc. If you take a holiday, if you get sick, you don’t get paid. Summers tend to quiet down and so does the holiday period … if you trade hours for dollars you know what I am talking about.
How can you make more of your time? How can you take what you do, wrap it up and sell it more as a product rather than time. How can you continue to sell even though you take a holiday or come down with the flu? Can you teach people something related to what you do, write a book, create an online course, a DVD course or even an audio book? Can you sell other things related to what you do? A gardener could do a DVD course about yard maintenance, a masseuse could write a book about how to keep your muscles supple and how to relax, an arthritis specialist could publish a book with advice for arthritis sufferers and a personal trainer can sell training videos online. There are various ways to wrap up what you do and sell it – how can you make your service or knowledge into a package that can be sold?
Blah blah bla bites, blah RAM, blah blah MHz blah… – Talk Like A Human!
What do you mean you don’t get it? Really?! There are actually a lot of people out there who think a lot of other people get it and can’t understand why there are not lots of people lining up to buy from them! :)
A few local IT companies have approached me about their marketing. These are smaller players in the market, offer various IT services and often also sell hardware. Most of these don’t sell a lot to IT specialists. Their main customers are individuals and small and medium sized businesses who don’t have an IT person, or if they have one, they are general IT managers who have a good overview of things, rather than specialists in anything.
The thing about these IT companies is that they are all pretty much the same – well, at least the ones I have checked out. They don’t set themselves apart in any way, and none of them talk like humans about what they can do for their customers. They all seem to get lost in techie jargon. Because they are all the same, and because they all speak tech jibberish, people don’t really care where they buy things. They will buy based on price and the whole market therefore competes on prices – and if people buy because of good service, it is more often than not because they were lucky enough to be serviced by Steve or Johnny or someone who is naturally good at customer service, rather than it being because of the company’s focus on customer service.
There are huge opportunities for differentiation in this market. Speaking [Read more…]
Are You Burning Inside?
Most of us don’t decide to live an empty life. Most of us do not want to do work that we are not interested in. Most of us don’t decide to go into business just because… Heck, those that have tried it know that you don’t go into business just for fun – it is a lot of work, unpaid for a long time and feels a bit like being back at university – you never really have any time off because you could always be doing something (and always feel like you should be doing something). You don’t go into business unless there is a fire in your belly. Unless it is what you really want to do. It’s a bit like acting. After three years at drama school and a few years in the “biz” I realised I simply did not want to be an actor – and believe me, that is not a business you’re in unless it is the only thing you can imagine doing!
I remember meeting with young and talented designers with a very exciting project. We discussed [Read more…]
Don’t be afraid to narrow it down…
This is classic marketing and I have talked about this before. Find your target group, the one that is most likely to buy from you, and market to that group. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. Find your dream customer and find more of those.
However, I never said it was easy. And it can be scary. You are always aware that you could be losing out on someone who may, perhaps, in theory, possibly buy. We all do it. I do it myself. I constantly have to remind myself that I have to choose and narrow it down further – not try to be everything to everybody.
Until now I have defined my target group as small and medium business that do not have a marketing specialist on board but need to, and want to, improve their marketing. Great. But boy, that is still wide open! So I am constantly thinking about this, considering things, talking to people and finetuning.
I have considered narrowing down to SMBs in certain industries, e.g. hotel marketing from A to Z, marketing for accountants from A to Z or marketing for designers from A to Z. [Read more…]
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