I recently viewed a presentation from Seth Godwin, (have also read his books). Fundamentally he makes a great point. With the emergence and unbelievable growth of the internet, businesses and services have become interchangeable. So Seth states you have to hunt for something unique about your business to enable you to stand out. Sounds like a sensible strategy but got me thinking.
During writing for my latest seminar I uncovered some amazing facts, in 1950 in America the average person got bombarded by fifteen adverts a day! Can you image that, I have the picture of a family sitting around the dinner table (eating meat with two veg, it is the 50’s after all) talking and recalling all the ads that they saw that day. Imagine that! Now the average American gets hit by around 3000! Yes 3000, I find that amazing. Makes really bad news for traditional marketers, you sort of get to the point of saying what’s the point anymore to billbords, magazine advertising etc
Seth makes the point given a market is as complex as this then you have to be a purple cow, for those that haven’t read his books he says if you drive down a country road and see a normal cow do you even notice? Would some even raise a eye brow at a normal cow? But if you drove and saw a field of cows and one was purple would your stop or even look? He makes the point of course. Now I agree that you need to find your purple cow but sometimes I think too many business try to be cleaver and find a point of difference. I think accept it that it if you sell a widget and ten others sell the same except it’s the same widget! Now I believe if you get resigned to the notion that because every widget is the same why would you buy mine and give up your missing marketing 101. GET A COMPLETE SALES AND MARKETING PLAN
You have to think of your client (or potential client) and solve their biggest issues, then and only then work out how to get to them! In New Zealand theres a website www.trademe.co.nz a takeoff of ebay, I get pitched every month from someone wanting to create a takeoff trademe. None work! There’s lots of reasons why but one nice one was in trademe’s first five or so years every weekend they dropped flyers on cars in supermarkets! Our biggest website, now equating to 60% of all internet traffic in New Zeland had to get their customers to find out about them by dropping flyers (manually!!) on car windows!
They had no purple cow, no new amazing breakthrough in technology but good old fashion brains to realise they had to work out ways to go direct to their potential customers.
In my experience advertising clutter is getting horrible but theres a silver lining, I believe that this growing clutter is evening the playing field for all companies (there will always be a few this doesn’t work for, coke, nike etc). Now if you can think of a way to get to the end customers then most of the time your one up on the big guys. I can’t see ATNT or AMAZON doing flyer drops!
Your big advantage as a small company
Yes the worlds changing and for the small businesses this change will benefit you, if you’re smart. The best way now to cut the clutter is to enter the world of social networking. Stuff purple cows, get friends to buy your products. Be liberal with the term friends, in my mind anyone that wants to buy from me can be my friend. Hell give me enough money and come round for dinner!
I was amazed that I set up a twitter account and within a month I had over 2000 people following me, imagine the world were regardless of advertising budget I can get a daily message to them if I want. Everyone should check shitmydadsays in twitter, 500,000 people follow him! Amazing. Use facebook, twitter, bebo any social networking. The bets stratergy I believe is to get as many followers then sell your heart off! There is rules and tricks which I might talk about at a later date.
Hope people get value out of my blog, feel free to visit my website www.webpartners.co.nz
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