Marketing! When it comes to getting exactly what your product’s about across to your customers, it’s quite incredible how many people simply get it wrong. But – and this is something that every small business person needs to accept – what you need to realise and understand, is that should you make a mistake that this is simply part of the learning curve.
Now, this isn’t meant to make you want to give up and go home. In fact, what it should do is help get that fire in your belly that gave you the passion to start your business in the first place, all riled up again.
And that’s what you should be listening to. That gut feeling that tells you that a certain marketing strategy is the way to go. Because nine times out of ten, that nagging feeling in the pit of your belly is offering you that spark of genius to which you should be paying attention.
You see – once you’ve identified your target market, what you really need to do is get inside the minds of your customers.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Why would your potential customers be looking for your product?
- What is it that would drive your target market to purchase your product?
- Is there a unique angle that you could exploit to showcase your product to your potential customers?
- Is your current marketing ploy simply a carbon copy of what all your competitors are doing?
Now – for the first three of those questions, that’s where you need to let your gut instinct come into play. Let your imagination run wild, no matter how crazy, daft or downright stupid those ideas might be, and get them all committed down on paper. (Because if you don’t, sod’s law says that you’ll have forgotten half of them by the time you want to re-consider. And you might have just let the marketing plan of the century be lost in the murky depths of your grey matter!)
And as for the fourth question! Well, that’s where most marketing plans fall into the same old trap – costing money, bringing in poor to average sales, and leaving most small business owners scratching their heads wondering what the heck they’re doing wrong.
A fantastic example of a small business owner using this gut instinct is John Webb from Wicked Campers – a company who provide the wackiest paint jobs on camper vans for travellers. Forget about the odd dint here and there, they concentrate on what the van looks like! He’s one guy who literally, with no real marketing experience, followed his gut as to how to develop and promote his brand. From understanding his target market to incredible promotions such as the ‘naked special,’ which – for the uninitiated, really is exactly as it sounds.
** This is just one of the many observations we made in an interview we did with John, the Founder of Wicked Campers. You can listen to the whole Wicked Campers marketing interview here. **
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