photo by kennymatic

Marketing for small business owners has gotten a lot harder in the last 20 years.  Way back when, if you wanted to generate some sales, you could pull together an ad, let people know what you were selling and you stood a good chance of selling more stuff.  These days there’s way too much noise out there for poor marketing to drive any sort of results.  You have to know your target market, but even more importantly you have to know the problem you’re solving or the outcome you’re delivering.

Marketing can be a complex process – you need to understand the demographics and the psychographics of your target market. You need to have an insight into their mindset and why they buy, what drives them to spend money. You need a clear call to action. You need your message conveyed in a medium that your target market is likely to read.

In fact there are a lot of reasons why your marketing isn’t working. However the most likely reason your marketing isn’t working is because your message isn’t resonating with your target market – they don’t care!

Which of these statements is more appealing to you?

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Looking through the lens of nostalgia, business used to be simple.  You could set up a road side stand (or the equivalent) and offer things that people wanted locally.  Your long term success totally depended on your local reputation and at the end of the day it was more about how you interacted with the community and your customers then it was about having some sort of great business model or get rich scheme.

Honest weights, Square Dealings – with the fish specials of the day.  Back in the day, it wasn’t just a numbers game, it wasn’t about having a sophisticated sales and marketing strategy or coming up with a surefire closing technique.  It was about doing the right thing, adding value and helping your customers win (while you win as well).

Sounds refreshing doesn’t it?

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of those values – maybe because slow and steady wasn’t good enough or all of the technology got in the way of good business practices.  However…the good news is that we’re starting to see a return to the good old days – people are using the technology that’s out there to break down the barriers, not create more of them.  Let’s look at few examples:

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photo by pshutterbug

Are you building your business on a shaky foundation?  When times are good, you can grow revenues and profits, even without a solid core for your business…however when times are tough (like the last couple of years), an unstable business is one that’s not going to last.

What makes for a solid and stable business?  Clearly you have to have a viable business model – the days of being able to ‘make it up in volume’ are long gone.  Can you make legitimate profit from what you’re doing or selling?

You have to have the right people in the right places – especially in a small business, there’s little room for error and any one person can have a huge impact (good or bad) on the outcome of your business.

Finally – a big part of your long term stability comes from your core values, your operating principles, the unique stamp that drives why and how you do business.

What does that mean?  Let’s look at an example:

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