Way to Grow

Surviving Despite the Big Guys

This one is mainly for you retailers out there -- but the message applies to all businesses. Many shop owners dread hearing that a dominant retailer is invading their market -- either through proximity to their location or via online sales. Hardware stores dread the presence of Home Depot, booksellers worry about Amazon, grocers fret about Safeway (or whatever supermarket leads in your region).

Recently, the public radio station in my area was interviewing locals about the new Wal-Mart that was opening in a small but growing community. Of course, Wal-Mart wants to open there, because they don't have a store within many miles and figure the town will be eager to shop in one of their superstores. The local merchants who were least worried all were telling the same story -- differentiate your business by finding a profitable niche the big guys don't fill:

• A local jeweler called in to the show and made the point that if you want jewelry made in China, you could get it at Wal-Mart, but if you want jewelry made by artisans in their hometown, come see him. Wal-Mart can't do that. 
• A hardware store owner explained that you could get a dimmer switch at Wal-Mart or Home Depot, but if you wanted expert advise on how to install it, you'd go to his place because he gives his employees extra training so they can provide superior service to customers.

This week my local newspaper, The Oregonian, ran a feature on Powell's Books, a Portland business that bills itself as the largest independent bookstore in the world. I can believe it; the main store covers an entire city block. But owner Michael Powell, when asked about the major retailers' heavy discounting, says "Anytime someone gives a product away, there's going to be some impact. But popular best-sellers have never been our niche. That's more of the Costco phenomenon. We do more nonconventional fiction, and if they move into those, it could have some real impact...but so far it hasn't caused us to break out a sweat."

These business people are all surviving because they have found a niche that they can serve better than the big chains. What is your niche?

Focus: Listening to SCORE

Many people starting a business have been advised to pay a visit or make a call to SCORE*, which describes itself as "Counselors to America's Small Business"  SCORE is a non-profit partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration and is staffed by volunteers with extensive business backgrounds. One can get counseling online, via the phone, or in one of 364 SCORE offices throughout the United States. The advice is free to all comers.

I have heard quite a few people complain that SCORE volunteers discouraged them from proceeding with their businesses, and I confess I had similar feelings after my first visit to a SCORE office. The counselor asked me why anybody would hire me as a marketing consultant when there were so many other marketing consultants out there. (This was during the dot-com recession when many unemployed marketers were calling themselves "consultants".) I took it as a negative, but I realize now that he was asking me if I could differentiate myself from the pack. It was a fair question; I had broad marketing skills but hadn't figured out what niche I might fill.

One of the problems I see repeatedly with startups is lack of focus. Unless you have a strong patent on a product or process, chances are extremely high that there are others, perhaps many others, who are offering or will offer what you do if it shows any signs of being profitable. There is undoubtedly an equally broad field of people who are willing to buy that thing if it provides some sort of value, but how will they find you?

You simply can't hope to succeed unless you differentiate yourself in one or more ways, and that means you need to narrow your offering and positioning so potential buyers can recognize your value to them.  That means you must start out with a narrow focus. Only when you have grown and are profitable should you broaden into other markets or product lines.

Listen to the SCORE counselors. Give serious thought to the questions they ask you. If you don't understand the feedback you get, ask to hear more about it. If you're still in doubt, get a second opinion. Chances are, these business veterans can help you better define your business and help you to be successful from the start.

* SCORE used to stand for, as I remember it, Service Corps of Retired Executives, however they have abandoned that usage, and you cannot find the history of the acronym anywhere on their website.

Focus Now on What You Can Win

It is so tempting for young companies to try to serve a broad market, thinking that they can make more money where there is a gigantic opportunity. But a one-size-fits-all product or offering doesn't really work anywhere, and the cost to support different offerings for different segments (say, small businesses vs. enterprises, or high-end consumers vs. bargain shoppers) is just too high for a growing company.

The big guy competitors that serve different markets didn't start out that way, either. If you dig into their histories, you will inevitably find they started in a niche, and when they had built up some cash reserves, worked their way out into other markets -- either organically or by buying other businesses.

Take some time, do some research, and ask your advisors: Which is the one market where we can get the best traction now? Then make the hard choice -- narrow your target market, offer the best products or service you can for that market, and figure out the best way to communicate with those prospects.

Greg Head in New Avenue blog tells a story of two entrepreneurs, one who focused and one who couldn't. Believe him when he says, "Of course, it’s hard to decide to narrow your focus as a company: hard on the ego, hard on short-term sales, hard on the customers you leave behind. But it quickly makes your business easier to run: easier to communicate to the market, easier to execute, easier to please your customers, and easier to grow in the long run."

Work on a Two Word Strategy

If you can describe your value proposition clearly in two simple words, you're onto something!  One of the problems with a lot of marketing materials and sales pitches is that they are too long and lack clarity. Anita Campbell suggests in The Importance of a Two Word Strategy that you keep honing your value proposition down until you can get it to two simple words. She refers to a talk given by Gary Harpbst, author of Six Disciplines for Excellence, whose point was that this refines organizational focus and alignment.

Well, I suggest that it's also important for marketing -- and I'd settle for three words.  But her point is valid.  She gives Dell's "being direct" and Intel's "Intel inside" as examples. These were each definers of the value proposition and messaging for two technology companies, but don't limit it to tech. I'm thinking of BMW's "ultimate driving machine" and Nike's "Just do it".  I like to use "Helping sales succeed" for my own marketing consulting business.

What is your two-word strategy?  Think about it!

Why Discounting Can Be Harmful to Your Business

You offer a discount and you'll sell more product, right?  Yes, could be.  But how much more do you need to sell to be better off than if you didn't discount? This is fundamental math that every business owner needs to consider.  Reuben Swartz authors Dollars and Sense: The Pricing Blog, and he recently treated this topic in a very clear and simple way. Rather than repeating what he says, I urge you to go there and read it all yourself.

One of Reuben's commenters pointed out that low-margin customers are often more demanding than high-margin customers. Sometimes. If this turns out to be true for you, you may be better off with fewer high-margin customers.

Another argument for not slashing prices applies if you have a large competitor. Chances are the big company has lower costs than you, and they can still undercut you without spilling red ink.

Know If Your Market Is Changing

Gary Bourgeault, who writes a thoughtful blog called Managers Realm, wrote Are You Monitoring the Market You're In?  Speaking of the U.S. auto industry, he puzzles, "With companies that have been so long in the business and having been through a number of difficult periods of time, what was it that caused them to not respond to what is obvious to those that take even a cursory look at the auto industry?"

Some industries change more rapidly than others. In ones like tech, people tend to be very watchful, sometimes even paranoid, of market trends. In less fast-paced industries, entrepreneurs can slip into complacency. "Business is good!"  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Except the landscape may be slowly eroding beneath them, and they haven't been watching out.

Bourgeault admonishes, "We need to take a somber and thoughtful look at this and ask ourselves if we are doing what huge companies that should have know better have done. Whether you're a sole proprietor or managing a huge division, somebody has to understand clearly and without prejudice what the true condition of the market you serve is, and where your current customers are at in reference to your products or services."

The start of a new year is a good time to look outside your business and see where your market may be heading.

Marketing Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

There's a strong temptation for entrepreneurs to run out and execute each new marketing idea as it comes to mind. Perhaps they heard that someone else had great success using web search optimization or a colleague got a fantastic response with a direct mailer.

Pamela Slim wrote recently about helping clients who were starting a business to define their marketing strategy. One of the partners explained that brainstorming marketing ideas wasn't her problem. Her problem was choosing one and actually doing it. Slim offered a step-by-step process for marketing planning that would work for any business (I paraphrase her steps slightly and add a few comments of my own.):

1. Spend time clearly defining your target market and niche - "Spend time" is a key phrase here.
2. Brainstorm all the ways that you could market to this group
3. Choose one specific activity that you think has the highest chance of success - You may be right, you may be wrong. Time will tell.  But choose just one.
4. Create a specific project plan and timeline for your marketing activity to this one group
5. Take your eyes off all the other potential marketing activities you could be doing or groups you could be marketing to, and execute your plan by any means necessary
6. Test the results of your activites, make adjustments, then if it looks like a winner, add it to your calendar as a regular, ongoing marketing activity - Implicit here is that you have a marketing calendar. If you don't, make one and follow it.
7. Move on to the next item on the list.
8. Remember that Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Every one of these is so important, I'm tempted to bold or underline them. The final one is really key, though. It is essential that you connect with your target audience multiple times, not just once. Studies have shown that it takes, on average, seven exposures to marketing messages before a customer buys from you. Keep going -- one foot in front of the other!

Do Your Marketing Words Work?

Often small business owners think they can't afford a professional writer for their ads, websites or brochures, so they write their own copy. When you're starting out, the money just isn't there.

StartUpNation says you should choose your words carefully, because some have been so overused their totally ineffective.

'When you write an advertisement, whether it’s for the newspaper, radio, or internet, you may want to tell people that your product is of high quality; that it’s a great value. You want them to know you have integrity. You are devoted to customer service, and you care about them deeply. Right?

Wrong!" [Read on...]

Break a Rule Brilliantly

Just about everyone in business wants to be better than average. Those who don't are, well, average at best and failures at worst. K blogs on the subject of Breaking the Rules, saying:

"In a competitive market,
average just isn’t good enough anymore in anything.

So how to be above average?

That can only be done
by breaking the rules consciously and deliberately.
To do that, one must first learn the rules
and then decide when it makes sense to break them.

Marketing is the same way.
There are marketing rules,
the stuff you learn in class or in case studies,
but following every marketing rule out there
won’t get your promotion noticed...

Pick a rule and break it brilliantly."

She applies the concept to writing romance fiction, which she apparently is also doing besides marketing and blogging. How will you apply it?

How Can You Keep Customers Loyal? Try Listening

You're probably in at least one company's loyalty program. Do you have frequent flyer miles? There's one. Have one of those frequent shopper cards in your wallet? There's another. These are programs designed to "reward" you as a returning customer, but many are riddled with rules and restrictions.

Jeanne Bliss in MarketingProfs says that customers are leaving loyalty programs that are more trouble than they're worth. She's talking about programs that make the customer jump through hoops for the reward, and warns that increasingly these programs are looking all the same.

Now you're probably not guilty of this, but think about the lesson: Your customers are certainly being deluged with marketing materials from many vendors, perhaps many of them competing. There's too much complex information, and that isn't what motivates customers anymore.

Today's customer prefers not to be "reached" unless you have a gem of an offer for them. Bliss calls it a "pearl". Sometimes what customers really want from you is to be heard. She tells this story:

One business-to-business company I know actually does an annual review with its best customers of what they needed and wanted and what was delivered to them and how it was delivered. It does this for several reasons:

1. To renforce the strength and bonds of the relationship
2. To summarize what they did well in, and to promise to do better in things where improvement is required
3. To work with customers to define their needs for the future

They then use this knowledge to establish a customized "touch point" plan for their most fiercely loyal and profitable customers.

There's nothing more important to good customers than asking for their feedback, doing something about it, and then telling them what you did for them. But most companies don't close the loop. We ask and we ask and we ask with no follow-through.

Secure the relationship when you ask about how to improve, by actually doing something about it and marketing it back to your best and most loyal customers. They'll be glad they stay with a company that cares so much.