Introduction: Results Based Marketer is the place smart small business owners and entrepreneurs go for powerful and straightforward marketing strategies to get more leads and make more money.
Normal message disguised as a disclaimer: At the end of this note, I will make you a killer offer. Surprise!
Dear Bay Area business owner,
One thousand six hundred nine businesses in the United States close their doors for the final time every day.
It's tempting to think that these businesses are all D- and C-service providers.
You may be thinking, "Their products were probably weak, or they treated their customers poorly."
Business is about survival of the fittest, but it is not the quality of the service of product we sell that determines whether or not we survive.
It's the quality of our marketing!
A+ businesses with bad marketing die at the hands of C and D+ businesses with top-quality marketing every single day of the year.
Why does that happen and how can we break the cycle?
The standard for business education, particularly marketing, has plummeted over the last 100 years.
The information being taught to our students and next generation of business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs is all modern and largely unproven.
Consider this, the majority of what can be found in most modern marketing classrooms is centered around the Internet and branding -- two disciplines that did not really come into vogue until the last 10 years.
You, as a business owner, are being lied to left, right, and center about what it takes to really make a business successful!
Who wants to know the real truth about this marketing business?
Today's marketing is based around branding. The Internet has come of age, and the world's fascination is with it.
The tactics I use to grow businesses of all kinds are straightforward. They have been around for hundreds of years and were perfected by the world's best and brightest marketers decades before I was born.
In other words, I have learned my craft from the best marketers of all time -- men who've each created billions of dollars for their clients with good, straightforward marketing.
Most marketing companies and consultants have no clue what really works!
It may not be a big surprise that many marketing companies and consultants do not have a standard system that they know works 100% of the time.
What a rip-off!
That means these fraudulent, unethical marketers are just playing a guessing game with your hard-earned cash and gambling on branding campaigns and whatever flavor of the month strategy they heard about on LinkedIn.
Unethical and unprofessional at the very least, these types can easily be spotted.
Remember, good marketing is a proven science, not a roll of the dice at a seedy casino.
Untouchable, dummy-proof systems have been around for over 100 years now, so any marketer that comes without a written, bulletproof guarantee of their work should be steered clear of.
The top three mistakes Bay Area small businesses are making everyday that doom them to failure are as follows:
1. No clearly defined USP (unique selling proposition)
USPs seem to have been forgotten over the past 3 decades, but they are the most important factor in making your business stand out from the crowd.
A good USP tells the customer exactly what your service is, exactly who you want to sell it to, and gives them a promise of quality, a timeline, or a guarantee.
It's simple enough, right?
In today's Internet crazed world, anyone can start a business. That means your competition has exponentially increase because of just how easy it is to open up shop.
When competition increases like that, it gets damn near impossible to spot the real, ethical, and talented service providers in the sea of pretenders!
Just having a solid USP will multiply your business almost overnight!
2. Trying to reach the largest audience
Cast a stone in any direction, and you're bound to give a social media, brand development, or SEO (search engine optimization) guru a solid thwack in the head.
They deserve it.
Small business owners often make the absolutely critical misstep of trying to develop mass appeal by targeting just about anything that lives and breathes.
And really, who can blame them the poor little guys, after all?
The world we live in is full of misinformation, phony gurus, and outright lies.
When I started this business, I was guilty of the same thinking, so of course, they are forgiven for thinking that is the way to growth and success, though the exact opposite is the truth.
Consider the carpet cleaner.
Would you rather spend loads of money trying to reach anyone who has carpeting, or would you rather spend a small fraction of that on reaching only homeowners with carpets?
Anyone includes people who live in apartments who have no investment in their carpeting.
Homeowners are invested and will dedicate time and money to ensuring it is clean and healthy and will last as long as possible.
By targeting and niching down, we are able to save a fortune and increase our reach into the right prospects by tailoring the message especially for them.
Another example is real estate. If you were a real estate agent who specializes in lofts in Downtown San Jose, would you advertise your services to anyone looking for homes in the Bay Area?
No!
What a terrible waste of time it is for both you and the potential home buyer if they call you, if they love San Jose, but want a big open house with a yard for the dog and their kids to play in?
It is even worse if they are calling to see if you sell homes in Palo Alto!
You'd want to advertise lofts specifically in the downtown San Jose area.
Casting a wider net means 10 times the expense, 10 times the wasted effort, and only one-tenth of the success a smaller net would have.
3. Relying on the "hope-based referral system"
Referrals are the lifeblood of small businesses the world over. If you are not orchestrating referrals, then you are missing out on a major chunk of revenue for your business.
Picture a conductor standing in a gargantuan concert hall. The intense brightness of the white hot lights above him dissipate out into a pitch black, eager audience.
The heat of course is oppressive, and the occasion is nerve wrecking, but the conductor is the picture of poise.
He has nothing to worry about.
There are a few, if any variables to consider, as he has painstakingly worked out every kink with his group in the weeks or months prior to this very performance.
The show goes off without a hitch. This is an orchestrated referral system -- orderly, predictable, and practically automated.
Now, picture the same conductor, under the same light, in the same hall.
However, instead of a seasoned group of professional musicians, he has 120 third-grade students sitting in tight rows of tiny plastic chairs with identical $5 plastic recorders.
The kids are chattering and thrashing about doing their level-headed best to be professional. Our conductor raises his hands and the noise begins.
The awful squeals that erupt for the next 2 minutes should be considered as an alternative to waterboarding with how painful it is to endure.
This is your referral system. It's chaotic and unpredictable. Expecting your clients or customers to refer you to their friends and family without having some kind of system in place (letters, postcards, reply cards, promotions, etc.) is like expecting 120 10-year olds to play anything resembling music.
Who am I looking for?
I am looking for the following:
* Business owners who are ambitious
* Bay Area located
* Making a minimum of $100,000
* Lifelong learners
* Open-minded
* Friendly and good humored
If you are any or all of these things, I am ready and happy to help you rocket propel your business forward. That is my true passion.
Who I absolutely do not want to work with?
I do not want to work with the following:
* Stubborn people
* People who believe they know everything about marketing and business already
* People who are slow to take action
* People who cannot work with deadlines
If you are any of these, please contact another provider on Thumbtack or elsewhere. We are not a good fit.
If you have read through all of this, mention it when we talk. I will give you a discount for being one of the good ones!
