There is one big thing that most business owners miss. Something that if we did more of, it would add a serious chunk of money into our businesses.
We simply don’t look for what is working.
All of us are too busy reinventing wheel, trying to find the latest silver bullet, when actually what we should be doing, is putting time into looking at what is actually making money for other people (regardless of the sector, industry, target market etc). And then working how how/if it can work for us.
It sounds simple – and it really is – but people don’t do it. And when people do raise their eyes up from their business they look in the wrong place. They look for the easily accessible – the things that makes headlines – the things that are “easy to see”.
Which brings us nicely to Farts and Love Sausage.
Just in case you haven’t seen – the last couple weeks brought us two bits of marketing brilliance.
Tesla has now given their cars the ability to make fart noises – and Marks and Spencer released a Love Sausage for valentine’s day…
School yard mirth aside – at their heart these are very simple marketing ideas;
One is an example of how to cut through the noise is a very noisy environment, by using something VERY different to the brand norms and harnessing the power of the people…
And the other is all about tailoring your offering so it appeals on a level way beyond product to your ideal target market’s personality. (Farts – yes really. Tesla have worked out their target market is middle aged men – and we find farting funny… apparently).
So whilst the concept here is simple – because they are wrapped up in something bigger – (delicious crispy bacon in the love sausage’s case) we as business owners tend to see it as “big businessey” and as such we don’t tend to let it enter our consciousness.
Which is a shame. These are both big businesses with big pockets and they wouldn’t be spending this kind of money if they weren’t seeing a return on it and as such it’s worth our time to have a look
But the thing is, whilst it’s interesting and useful to look at what these guys are doing, actually for most of us it’s pointless – because often the easy to see stuff, whilst possible, on a practical level it is very difficult to translate into our sphere.
We need to look in different places.
What are the people in businesses like ours doing to make the difference? Not those with multi-million budgets and small armies of staff just normal, “ordinary” business that are making more money than me – how are they doing it and can I do it too?
You will all know another business owner who is making more money that you, (and it’s not all about the money) so whilst it’s interesting to see what the big brands are doing it’s actually USEFUL to see what the accountant down the road is doing to allow them to take on more staff – or how the local plumber is using video to increase their quote conversion by 20%.
Because that is the stuff that we can all do. It’s clearly not £million pound budgets and huge teams of staff – They are just doing something that we are not and as a business owner I need to find out what that is.
I don’t care what industry they are in or what they sell, I just want to know what they are doing that is making any difference to their bottom line – and then I want to work out if I can do it to.
So whilst there is plenty to learn from farting and love sausages – I want to look towards what will probably be slightly more mundane but give me a thing that I can do straight away to move my business forward.
