It is hardly a surprise that many businesses don‘t make it past the five-year mark if you think about all the challenges that come with running your own business.
People often think that businesses fail because their product or service isn‘t good enough, or because their competitors are better than them. This is often not the case!
In reality, many businesses fail because they make one of these three mistakes when it comes to attracting customers:
- They do not market their business at all and rely solely on word-of-mouth to get new customers.
- They have a scattered approach to marketing where they just “kind of try a few things and hope for the best,” which often results in thousands of dollars down the drain, not to mention countless hours.
- They are overly focused on one strategy. They have put all their eggs in one basket and invested in a supposedly “magic” strategy that promises to 10x their business overnight.
In order to create real growth in business, it‘s important to truly understand marketing. Not just “give it a good go and hope for the best,” or wait for word of mouth to spread. Too many companies go under because of this mentality.
We started one of our companies, Basic Bananas over a decade ago and managed to grow not only into a global brand but also employ an incredible team of 33 amazing humans. Along the way we‘ve applied the same principles and frameworks and have founded multiple other companies (including The Business Hood, Oceanlovers, Moments of Humanity), all while maintaining a lifestyle that excites us and traveling the world (we are currently riding a motorcycle from Switzerland to Central Asia).
But what excites me the most is to have been able to help thousands of business owners to grow their own businesses.
How?
Often business owners ask me “What‘s the best marketing strategy?”
And I always say “There isn‘t ‘the‘ one.”
It‘s true, there isn‘t one single marketing strategy you can use forever after.
If business owners want to be wildly successful, they need to stop looking for the magic pill or a quick fix and concentrate on finding out who their customers truly are, study their psychographics and create their own mix of marketing strategies that speaks to the exact customers they want to attract. Once this has been done properly, the rest is actually quite simple! Communicating with your target market becomes easy, because it‘s like talking to a good friend.
This applies across all industries…
… lawyers
… ecommerce stores
… plumbers
… designers
… hairdressers
… accountants
… event planners
… fashion
… doctors
… [insert any type of business]
On top of this, there are certain frameworks that can help business owners on their mission to understand marketing. In order to create results, a structure is necessary. A structure that supports their vision.
So while there‘s not one single strategy that can transform a business overnight (even though many self-proclaimed experts will promise you exactly that) there is one thing business owners CAN RELY ON when it comes to growing their company.
From the very beginning, out of the garage where we started Basic Bananas (I know, so cliche!) and with a mission to support business owners around the globe, there is one framework we keep applying to every business we build:
WE BLOCK OUT TIME TO MAP OUT OUR MARKETING APPROACH EVERY 90 DAYS. So while the market, the tools and the economy are ever changing, this is the one constant in every single one of our businesses.
We get really clear on:
… Why we are doing what we are doing.
… Who our customers are.
… What makes us unique.
… What the right combination of marketing strategies is for optimised results.
This is the basis for everything we do and the reason why we never waste money and time on stuff that doesn‘t work. Through this process we know exactly what our purpose is and it makes it very easy for us to decide what we need to focus on when it comes to marketing.
We use the same framework for thousands of business owner we work with every year, with results that make me never want to stop doing what we are doing. For example.
… a law practice that quadrupled their business in less than 2 years.
… an event company that increased their conversion rate from 5% of enquiries in one year to 50% in the next.
… A training organisation that increased their revenue by 25% in the first month of working together.
Here’s why I’m sharing this with you…
… I see a lot of business owners missing out on the potential of their business simply because they do not know who their ideal customer is or how to reach them. Let‘s change that…
… I know that by learning how to map out their marketing, business owners will end their confusion and finally stop wasting precious resources on stuff that doesn‘t work.
Here are 4 questions every business owner needs to have clarity on:
- Why you are in business.
- What kind of person would benefit from your product or service the most.
- What sets you apart from your competition.
- What marketing strategies will complement each other to drive the greatest results for you and bring the right kind of customers to your business.
If you‘re not sure how to get started with these four questions, I‘d love to invite you to our half-day Blast Off marketing workshop where we‘ll show you this exact framework and map out your one-page marketing plan for the next 90 days step by step.
We have made this workshop low-cost because we believe that with this planning framework, business owners have a much better chance to succeed. I am serious about helping businesses making a bigger impact and I‘d love to see more of them break through the multiple seven-figure revenue mark.
We‘ve had thousands of businesses around the world attend these sessions, many of whom refer their friends, which means that we often have a full house, so if you‘d like to grab a ticket for the next time we‘re in town be quick to book yours here.
We’ll be back in these cities soon: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Newcastle, Canberra and Auckland.