Small Business Marketing

Small Business Marketing: “For The Hundredth Time, It’s Not
Business to Consumer or Business to Business Marketing, Silly… It’s People to People Marketing!”

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times… businesses don’t speak to other businesses or to consumers, it’s PEOPLE in businesses who speak to other people in other businesses or, directly to customers!

Yes, it’s about people connecting with other people.

But it seems as if business owners love to get clobbered over the head with the same message hundreds of times over… and still refuse to ‘GET IT’.

Proof?

Just cast your eye over the dozens of unread marketing promotions, sales letters, email campaigns, brochures in your own life. And, what about the number of business collapses in any industry sector you care to name… in any place in the world you care to name!

Yes. The virus of embedding a bland, lacklustre personality-less sales message has ripped into the heart of every category of business you care to name. And, quite frankly, it’s boring the heck out of most of us.

After all, we’re all ‘end users’, of some product or service, right?

Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that most of the incompetent advertising and marketing created today, is simply ballooning the coffers of the marketing consultants and advertising agencies.

How?

By simply proclaiming “innocence” for their marketing dabbling, and all the while, sweetly liberating oodles of cash from the hapless and ‘none the wiser’ client.

If you were to believe that a new technological strategy (blogs, podcasts, webcasts, multimedia messaging…) a new customer database tracking software, a new joint venture partner, a new blah blah will do the trick in turning a lifeless, dull and energy less business, into rip-roaring passionate profit machine, it won’t.

In fact, all it will do is multiply the recipient’s misery, magnify the businesses’ lack of personality, and highlight the fact that the whole communication process is fraught with quick-fix band aid solutions.

It’s by speaking and communicating to people in a way that treats them as emotive, caring feeling people, and not as nameless, faceless, corporations or individuals.

I mean it’s amazing why there seems to be a distinct divide when communicating to a person, whether they be an end consumer or a business entity.

But somehow, from somewhere (probably plucked out of thin air!) there’s the notion that “my clients are different”. So that means they need to be talked to in sophisticated language, they need jargon, they need pomp, the need ceremony, they need ego feeding, they need buttering up, they need… !!

No matter who it is: whether we’re communicating to the president of a multinational, the owner of a mom and pop store, the dean of a college, a retired engineer who’s an end consumer, when we BORE THEM, WE LOSE THEM!

And, as an aside, isn’t the same true within families and personal relationships?

The richness of communication and the deepest of relationships occur when there’s a continual investment of time, energy, conversation, feeling and respect.

When the human electricity fades, when the laughter subsides, when the dull ‘n drab rules with increasing monotony… BOREDOM creeps in. Leading to… !!

What was it that was highlighted on a recent Oprah Winfrey show about failing marriages? The women said that the reason for the split was “he just didn’t pay enough attention to me, anymore!”

An Electronics Components Seller:
From Bland and Boring to… Hot and Happening!

Would you like to know how a dejected, deflated and out of sorts supplier of electronic components (yawn yawn!) turned his marketing into a storm of activity and lit up a once dreary and bland marketplace for his products and services?

This is a simple account of a man who couldn’t muster the action to change things in his ‘boring business’, let alone allow the thoughts to enter into his mind that his electronic parts business was much more than simply talking to manufacturers in part numbers.

To him, there was no romance in his business. There was no excitement. No enthusiasm.

And, although he won’t mind me saying this, he wouldn’t even engage in a simple direct marketing exercise where he was asked to inject a dose of passion, a dash of oomph, a little flavour of excitement into a promotional writing task.

It took some time for this fellow to loosen up. Judging by the troubled and forlorn look on his face, there was probably a lot going on in his life. He felt he was ageing, rapidly… consistently banging his head against up and coming competitors all having fresher, innovative ways of doing things... feeling the daily wrath of his significant other – his wife of nearly twenty years.

Through a little more uncovering, it seems that his was one of a dozen companies in this funny little industry, all chasing the same business clients in the same lifeless, monotonous way.

Will a little further investigation, it seems as if prospective clients were concerned about two things – price, and reliable delivery. Now, in any market, knowing a number of key factors about what prospects are keenly concerned about, would be valuable information.

This guy needed liberating from his mental dilemma, so, after a stroll down to the bar and after slugging down a few beers, he loosened his tie and then, somewhat feeling liberated from his own mental chains, his thinking took on a new ‘lease of life’.

In fact, he seemed to have a crazed zeal about him that would have frightened the hardest of thugs in the darkest of alleys! Somehow, it seemed an appropriate time to issue a challenge to him to come up with a lively passionate sales letter to send to companies that he didn’t have as customers.

Anyhow, after a couple of months had passed, a letter came in from our friend. I thought he was going to mention that he tried the new personality style of marketing and promoting and that he was laughed right out of his industry.

Sending just 100, 3-page letters to his targeted audience, he had a response from 22 shocked, bewildered and amazed new prospects, of whom 18 came on board as new clients who later wrote £150,000 worth of business with him over the next 12-months!

You see, his new style marketing and reader friendly, direct response marketing letter - a letter that focussed all the attention on his prospect and contained an entire chest full of truly wonderful marketing and copywriting secrets - won people over… in droves.

And, part of the reason for such interest was he wrote his letters in red ink on shocking pink paper! Also, attached to the letter was a regular parts catalogue that had a huge hot pink sticker on the front of it that said “Boring, but necessary”.

Yes, he certainly did the necessary thinking, and then followed it up with the crucial ACTIONS on changing his personal circumstances. And… he certainly created more than a stir in his limp marketplace. In fact, he was the happy creator of a marketing revolution in his once-dreary little industry.

This man done something that most others won’t do, no matter what business they’re in or what they’re selling - he humanised himself. He gave people the biggest reason for dealing with him and his company… his genuine, authentic personality!

He became a warm, vulnerable, sincere person in his market place and people loved him for that. He became a three dimensional person instead of a flat as a board, monotone, one-dimensional person.

R C. Hireker is a Promotional Copywriter and Marketing Consultant Specialising in Creating Personality Driven Marketing. Who Says Marketing and Advertising Has To Be Hum Drum Boring? FREE, 7-Part Ad Course in Creating Copywriting That Sparkles & Sells. Send blank email to: KillerAdCourse@Aweber.com . For Smart marketing insights and thinking, go to… http://www.Raja-Hireker.Blogspot.com

You can reach the writer of this article by Email at the following address:
RCHireker@Simple-Marketing-Solutions.com . Or, by Phone, anytime, 24 HOURS A DAY, 7-DAYS A WEEK, on: 44 (0) 208 764 1085