When it comes to marketing your business, most people realize they must get the word out about their products and services somehow. But whenever they try to run ads, send mailings, or market online, it just seems like marketing just doesn’t work. Maybe these efforts pull in a few inquiries, but they don’t consistently generate business. It seems like marketing is a crap-shoot. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. And most people couldn’t tell you why.
Over the years, I’ve heard a number of reasons why prospects and clients hate marketing: It takes too much time. They don’t know where to start or what to do. When they do market their services, they don’t get consistent results. They hate selling. They don’t want to sound like a pushy salesman or be rejected. And ultimately, they believe that if they do a fantastic job, business should just come.
Why Small Business Marketing Doesn’t Work
The number one reason why small business marketing doesn’t work is because most of it is ego-driven. In other words, the approach most people take with marketing is to tell prospects about what you do, what experience you have, or what you know. You will see this with firms who advertise “We have over 150 years of combined experience in XYZ industry” or provide you with a vague laundry list of services they offer.
This approach to marketing seems like common sense. After all, if prospects don’t know who you are, why would they hire you? You have to “get the word out” about you and your services somehow.
The problem with this is that prospects are more interested in what they get, not what you do. When you (and everyone else) tell prospects what you do, it adds to their information overload. We live in a world where so many things compete for our attention every day. Ads are everywhere. Media is everywhere. We live in a perpetual state of distraction.
In order to cope with all this incoming information, we have to filter things out. We would go crazy if we didn’t. So we have become very good at ignoring things that we don’t perceive as relevant to us.
What is relevant to us? Our current problems, pains and concerns that keep us up late at night. Sometimes, the minor irritations add up until we have had enough. Sometimes, it’s the really big problems we can’t seem to solve adequately. Whatever it is, those are the subjects that consume most of our attention.
What Makes Marketing Work?
If you want to get prospect’s attention, you must focus your marketing around what prospects are most concerned about – themselves and their problems. They want the solution to their problem. They want to know what other people just like them have done so they can see themselves getting the same results.
This approach may seem counter-intuitive, but marketing is fundamentally psychology. It is about stepping into your prospect’s shoes and viewing the world from their perspective.
Too often, small businesses create marketing materials based on their own preferences. They say what they want or need to say. They use images and colors they like. They feel proud when family, friends, and colleagues tell them how attractive their new brochure or website is.
Effective marketing isn’t about you. It is about saying what prospects need to hear. It focuses around helping prospects understand their problem better, educating them on potential solutions, and demonstrating how other people just like them solved that problem.
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Good article but it ended too soon. Would have liked the article to include “real” examples of effective marketing strategies that peaked prospective clients’ interests. In other words, what strategies were developed and implemented to help prospective clients better understand their problems and enlighten them accordingly with potential solutions including demonstrations on how competitors solved problems similar to theirs).
thanks for your info on why small business marketing doesn’t work. I have been approached by small firms for my services and I agree, self promotion of their own business and the way it was presented did not impresss me at all. thanks for your article.