How To Succeed In Business By Being Smart About It. (Part 10 In A Series)

This is part of my series on smart marketing for small business. Other posts in this series are available at the bottom of this post, on my beBee blog wall.

When you are starting your own business, or even rebranding an existing one, there are a number of things you need to do. And these break into two distinct areas.
1. Things that you can do yourself, and
2. Things that you might need help with.

So your very first order of business is to sort out which goes where. 

Do-It-Yourself Branding Is Almost Always A High Risk Idea

A lot of people who start small businesses tend to do so on the basis of a connections they have developed, a product or product line they have created or have gotten the license to represent or a marketable skill set they possess.

They may be very sure of themselves when it comes to sitting down with an interested prospect who is ready to buy, but may very well need a lot of help in really defining their company, creating the right communications strategy, developing the branded image and effectively targeting their marketing so that they can attract those interested prospects in the first place.

One of the key reasons that the majority of business startups fail has very little to do with the quality of their offering, their skills or even their salesmanship.

It mainly has to do with the simple fact that they started their business without allowing for professional help to do the things that they are not good at. What this means is that they end up positioning themselves inaccurately or amateurishly which leads to any or all of the following situations:

They either miss their target audience, or 
• They connect with their target audience, but send them the wrong message which, in turn confuses them, or
• Their target audience, who will judge them by the quality of the corporate identity and branding they have created, will see them as amateurish and not develop the confidence they need to do business with them.
 
Creating & Building Your Business Means Doing It Right…From The Start

The majority of people who start small businesses tend to completely underestimate both the need for and the cost of creating a communication strategy and a corporate identity that identifies and puts forth the true USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of their company.

There are a number of reasons why this can happen. Money is the most prominent. But there is also the outmoded notion: “If you build it, they will come.”  While this notion speaks to the confidence that the business owner has in their product or service, this becomes a very difficult row to hoe in today’s ultra competitive billion web site business universe.

It Starts With Finding Economies of Scale

Most small businesses can’t afford a full service advertising agency to create an earthshaking campaign that will make them a household name overnight. What’s more realistic is finding a strategically oriented creative person who can see their USP, and build a professional corporate identity around it.

The economies of scale kick in because a multifaceted individual who can create communications strategies, write and art direct the materials needed to get a business off to a professional looking start, will cost a good deal less than three individuals doing each of those functions in tandem. This person will also have access to the other services you need (web site design, photography, printing etc), but will not broker these services, so you will not have to pay markups on them.

All in all, it’s a very smart way to go about establishing your corporate identity, or rebranding your company in a way that will effectively reach and talk to the people you need to talk to in order to make your business grow. It will also give you more time to do what you’re good at and because you will be spending less time trying to figure out how to do the things you’re not good at.