Which of these statements rings true to you? “I have competition today.” “I have less competition today.” “It’s about the same.” We believe you probably have less competition today than you did a year ago.
What’s your belief about advertising? “It’s more important to advertise today, less important, or about the same? In a recent article published by E-zine, Michael Forty, a plumber operating his own business, had this to say, “Nobody should underestimate the positive effect of advertising, especially when everybody else seems to be reducing. It just might be possible to turn our whole situations around when we look and act positively”
We couldn’t agree more. Now is the time to stop listening to the voices of doubt and gloom and take advantage of the current climate to grow your business. There hasn’t been a better time or greater opportunity for small business since the entrepreneurial boom of 1945 – 1950. So in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, why aren’t we “gettin’ er done?”
Maybe it’s because we don’t exactly know what to do, or how to do it. Maybe we are too busy doing the urgent rather than the important. Whatever the reason, there is a palpable feeling of inertia in the business community right now and you can make that inertia work for you. All you have to do is shift your priorities and still resolve to do the urgent but leave some time to get involved with the important as well..
Billy Rose, the famous Broadway producer and impresario, once said, “Everybody has two businesses, their business and show business.” Stepping off Broadway and onto Main Street, let’s take a page from Billy’s book and tweak it - “Everybody has two businesses, their business and the advertising business.”
The truth is that you probably don’t know much about advertising and marketing. Why? Because you never needed to in the past. Well, times have changed and now, those who don’t pay attention to advertising and marketing will suffer loss of market share and may even face business failure. In these times you need help to take advantage of the many innovations and options available.
Advertising has always been something of a mystery to business owners – even the successful ones. John Wannamaker, department store magnate and inventor of the price tag, once said, “I know fifty percent of my advertising works. Now I have to figure out which fifty percent.” If John W. had a tough time figuring it out in the early part of the 20th century, imagine what he would think about the challenges we, as business people, face in the 21st century. Faced with the ever increasing number of advertising and marketing options, I’m sure that John would have called in an expert. It’s the smartest move a business owner can make.
Recently, I spoke to a business owner in New Jersey. Business was not booming for him but not for lack of effort on his part. He set about trying to build a bridge to his customer base but, like Governor Palin, ultimately, all he built was a road to nowhere. Unlike Governor Palin, his road wasn’t a four-lane black top to nowhere – it was a web site constructed to access a market that he now knows just doesn’t exist. My caller spent 100K on something that would not, and could not work. How did that happen, you ask? Simple, instead of concentrating on his core business, he wasted his time and his money chasing a pipe dream, He certainly knew his business, but he didn’t know the advertising and website business,
Here is what we believe. YOU CAN’T DO IT ON YOUR OWN. Smart business owners know that the best way to get the job done is to hire the best people to do it. Advertising is NOT your job, running your business is. Don’t waste your time trying to learn someone else’s specialty. You wouldn’t ask your accountant to fix your delivery truck just as you wouldn’t ask your mechanic to do your taxes. Hire the best people for the job and you’ll get the best job possible.
When I was a school kid, in the 1950′s, my science class visited the Hayden Planetarium in New York. At the Planetarium, we saw a wonderful show about the future of space travel and the city of the future in the year 2000
. Sadly the promise of that city, hasn’t materialized, Our cities today look and function much as they did more than a half century ago
In the 50′s, we believed that the future was built on moving from one place to another quickly and .efficiently . We dreamed of rapid transit, jet packs, cars that drove on auto pilot and clean, modern, gleaming ,efficient cities.
Sadly, it didn’t happen the way we thought and hoped it would. We haven’t strapped on our jet packs Our cars look different then they did in the 50′s but the power is supplied an engine introduced by the Ford Motor company in 1932, the V-8 . There was a revolution…the revolution took place on another front. It was an information revolution – the growth of mass media and the Internet. We started out wanting to get places faster and more efficiently until we discovered we didn’t really have to go anywhere at all! We can stay home and attend meetings over the internet, or talk “live” using . Indeed, we can go virtually anywhere without leaving the comforts of our home or office.
Several cases in point. Yesterday, I spent an hour training a telemarketing team in a remote part of the Philippines on the telemarketing techniques for the US market. I talked with a Danish company about a new blog we are planning for our company. I pitched a company in North Florida on our PPC services. I took an inbound call from a man in Idaho about the production of an infomercial. Here’s the best part. I never left my desk here in sunny South Florida!
You may be thinking, “Sure, that’s great for you, but I am Mike the Plumber, Joe the Doctor, Debbie the Psychotherapist, I rebuild transmissions for a living, people come to me or I go to them and those advantages don’t apply to me.”
It doesn’t matter what you do, you can get more business by harnessing the power of the information revolution for your business or practice! Best of all….it is not going to cost you a fortune.
Here are some examples of what we mean. You can put your company on television and the Internet with a professionally produced 1/2 hour program all about - You, what You do, and why You do it better than your competition,You can create a 30 second commercial and air it on CNN, Discovery, ESPN and a host of other networks. You can optimize your web site to place you on the first page of Google and the other search engines in your market place and it doesn’t need to cost a small fortune to do any of it. Most of what we just mentioned is available for less than the cost of an 1/8 page ad in most newspapers.
We still wish we had jet packs and moon-side vacations but the information revolution has given us something almost as nice – the opportunity to help you grow your business with smart, effective marketing. Remember, if you want the best results, hire the best people to do the job.
YOU NEED TO REFINE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL BY MAKING MARKETING AND ADVERTISING more than just an afterthought. Marketing and advertising are vital parts of doing business. You can’t afford to just let the same old, same old continue to fail to bring in new business. Most importantly, you need to know that if you don’t put in the effort to market your business, your competition will.
Now is the time to let your business shine. Need some help,come visit www.fyitvnetwork.com