Irma is right and it applies to all elements of communication.

Yesterday I received an email from a contact I don’t really know on a social networking site.

The person runs a photography business and looking at the website you can see the person’s skills as the photographs were quite amazing.

To get the shots she obviously had the trust of the clients as well as the connection.

The website also had a video with the person talking about her work and you could feel the warmth as she spoke about building relationships with clients.

Oops

The email unfortunately broke a lot of common sense rules but the main one was the lack of warmth.

It was cold and as it was form email sent to a number of people I didn’t take it personally when it implied my photo on the site sucked and it was costing my business.

Now I know I am not photogenic but play nicely.

I am not even sure she wrote it as it just seemed so different to the tone of the video and website.

No one is perfect and when marketing your brand it is easy to slip up. However in the rush to communicate forgetting the basics can ruin a potential relationship.

Personality

When you are developing your positioning one of the key elements is your brand’s personality.

If it is to be warm and empathetic then it needs to be consistent across all mediums and formats. Whether it is via visuals or just as text in emails the personality and tone has to come through every time.

Otherwise you can risk confusing customers and alienating them.

Second Chance

One of the features of today’s world is the time constraints our customers have. Every message or offering is being considered as whether it is worth their time.

Removing any complexity in the building of relationships and simplifying their decision process by providing consistency in communication especially with your branding is necessary.

The idea of giving a second chance is not an option for today’s busy customer.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this especially those of you who have the expertise in the communications area.

To make sure they do what is asked the judge raises his voice.

They can’t sneak in a little bit more sauce or cooking the meat any longer.

They have to serve up their dishes to the judges that they made in the allowed time.

Although not as dramatic, there comes a time when you have to step away from your activities and tools and see what your action your customers have taken.

• Have they bought?
• Have they turned to a competitor?
• Have they bought more of your products or services?
• Have they referred your business?

The cooking contestants are asked why they chose the dishes and ingredients. Often the answer to these questions highlights whether they made the right decision or not for the time allotted.

Why Have You Chosen Them?

This question is sometimes overlooked in marketing. Especially when selecting your activities and tools.

By not answering it up front and jumping straight into action can waste your time. This is because you do have a time constraints to achieve your goal.

Benefits Of Knowing Why

It helps you to not waste time focusing on learning and implementing the wrong activities.

The question simplifies your marketing and helps you make better use of your time to achieve the end result you want to grow your business.

Asking and answering the why question can be applied to all aspects of your marketing and not just the activities such as “Why are you setting your price at that level?”

Taking a moment to consider why can save you frustration and help get customers to take the action you desire.

Have you ever used the Why question in your business?

It is obvious and yet often overlooked.

Making this target market mistakes complicates all you do and that can be so frustrating especially when you work so hard.

Avoiding it simplifies your marketing and can grow your business.

It is all about guessing.

Specifically it is guessing about your customers.

In all my years in marketing it is the major one that wastes time and money.

If you don’t know in depth all about how your customers think, feel and behave you are left with playing the old assumption marketing game.

This means you have to guess about:

• What products or services you should be offering
• Whether your pricing is correct
• If your key message will make an impact
• What the best channels are to communicate your message
• Your customer service process
• Your key competitive advantage
• What presence you should have online and where

And many more.

Now it is easy to learn a little about them when you first start and think you are done.

Especially as you get busy working in your business.

The problem with this is they can change due to many factors which may not be obvious to you.  Just like people in your personal life.

To grow your business to whatever size you want making sure you keep up to date with customers is vital.

To start just spend a little time and list out what you know and what you don’t know at the moment.

This includes who buys what products or services all the way to how they like to communicate and what they do online and offline.

Avoiding this mistake doesn’t have to be complex. In fact it is one of the simplest ways to remain trusted and relevant in their lives.

What is your tip you would share to make sure you don’t have to play the marketing guessing game?

After a while you know the lyrics and you may even be tempted to sing along when it plays.

That is if you like it.

It is a simple case of using repetition which is one of the elements of persuasion.

Advertisers and politicians have known about this for decades and it works. Especially if the core message is single minded and clear.

Repetition and Familiarity

Repetition if done correctly brings familiarity and that can help with customer relationships and growing your products or services.

One reason why they work together is due to the ease of processing information. The more often we are exposed to something the less taxing it is on the brain to analyse it and make decisions.

This concept is also used by companies such as McDonalds. They have a process that makes the hamburgers that is repeated throughout the stores.

This means as customers the store and food are familiar we don’t have to take time to think whether the food will okay to eat regardless of where we are in the world.

Another example is the repetition online of certain statements such as content is king. It has been repeated for quite a while and many if asked would say yes it is king.

Marketing Opportunity

It is easy to become bored with your communication and other aspects of marketing and make changes.

However if it is a major change for example with your key message means it will need to repeated quite often for customers to become familiar with it.

You can use the concept of repetition in other ways such as posting your articles more than once on twitter.

Or including or referring to your key messages in all communication such as newsletters.

You can be creative in the ways you use repetition so it doesn’t annoy. The main point is don’t be afraid to use the concept.

Do you use repetition with your marketing communication?

Not to mention the boost in your sales and profit.

Here is one of example that I experienced on the weekend when I was restoring my laptop.

To get it back to working order meant reloading software, finding the product keys etc.

Some of the software was downloaded from the web and I couldn’t find a record of the downloads or product numbers.

To get the information from two companies meant a series of phone calls, waiting for emails, answering questions.

Time to get all of this was about 2 hours.

With another company I just had to login to the free account and in my account was all the information on one page.

Time to get the information was 2 minutes.

Apart from the big time difference one company obviously knew about making things simpler for customers.

Be The Same

You could be like the two companies that follow what seems to be usual practice for them and their competitors.

However by just following what others do and not looking at ways to make life customers’ lives simpler can make it more difficult to differentiate your brand.

Stand Out

One way to stand out and find opportunities is to look at your customers stress points.

In my example time was a stress point. I needed to get everything back up and running as soon as I could.

The other company saved me time and made the whole process simple. If I ever decided to seek an alternative to their product then competitors would have to exceed this key benefit.

If you can find one thing to save for customer’s time as part of your marketing strategy to get the result they desire you will be remembered.

And stand out from your competitors.

Have you ever done something differently that made an impact with your customers? Share your story.

If you have ever felt this way you are not alone.

You might throw your hands up and not do anything at all.

Or you might try something else hoping this time you will get results.

It really doesn’t have to be this way.  And that it is because it usually comes back to doing the basics well to get results.

Yes there is some work involved but it isn’t as difficult as you may think.

Develop a marketing plan that is simple and focused

There really isn’t any way to get around it, unless you enjoy the wild ride called seat of your pants marketing.

It doesn’t have to be a tomb. But it does involve having a detailed customer profile of your current customers for example so you know how they think, feel and behave.

Developing a plan makes you think and it forces you to make decisions. It is exactly the same thing you do in your personal life if you were planning an important holiday or project such as a home renovation.

Above all it gives you clarity and saves time.

Stick to the marketing plan

Now this doesn’t mean you don’t have to make adjustments because you do. After all nothing is perfect and sometimes conditions happen and you have to tweak what you are doing.

Or a real opportunity arises that you should consider.

However any adjustments are usually based on sound reasons and not the latest whim or tool that you hear about.

Otherwise all your hard work to date would count for nothing.

Many times the frustration of not getting results can be simply avoided by getting the basics in place. Whether it is marketing or home renovations it means having a plan in place that makes sense for you.

Do you have a marketing plan in place?

For content to be king means that all other marketing elements are not as important.

Some elements may have been placed so far down the line it is like being the fourth cousin of the tenth person in line for the throne.

This is not to say content is not important because it is and it has many benefits.

It is perhaps a case of putting into perspective.

You can have compelling content but if your pricing or product or services are not performing then it can slow the growth of your brand.

All elements of the marketing mix including other tactics can’t be put on a set and forget basis if you want to build a strong business.

Perhaps before you do more content perhaps it is worth taking a moment to put it into perspective so you can maximise your time and money.

To make it a little simpler perhaps before you head off to produce another piece of content you do a marketing review and ask yourself a few questions such as:

• Have you a clear picture of the customers you want to attract and retain?
• Do you have a simple and concise positioning that the content supports?
• Why are you producing content?
• Is your content achieving anything?
• What are the reasons why you produce content in the various formats?
• Have you a customer service process in place?
• Is your pricing right?
• Have you improved the quality of your product or service lately?
• Is your point of difference meaningful to customers or me too?

We are lucky today that we have the opportunity to share content and communicate with a bigger group than before. But to have a brand and business that will grow we need to never forget that all elements need to be looked at.

As always would like to hear your thoughts on this.

This is one thing you hear every day but it often in the rush of running a business it isn’t always easy to do.

You may have heard about the $1billion acquisition by Facebook for Instagram.

Much has been written about it and reading through the articles there are a couple of things that I think can be applied to any business.

Both of these centre on simplicity and why it is becoming increasingly important to embrace it.

The first aspect is:

Design

Keep it lean. Apparently when they designed Instagram they resisted the urge to load it up with features.

They also said no to the many new features that could have been added.

Marketing tip: look at your products or services and see just how many features you have. Are they al essential, or could removing some make a difference for your customers and your position in the market.

You may find that you could have two or three products or services to sell rather than one with too many features.

The second is:

Easy to use

The guys at the company wanted Instagram to be easy to use so they made it that people using it had few actions to take.

Everyone is busy today and the easier it is to buy from you, have a relationship and use your product or service the happier customers could be.

Marketing tip: look at how many actions you make your customers take to use your products or services.

See what you can take out to simplify it for them and they will no doubt thank you.

The last thing about Instagram and the company is that they specialised. They are known for one key thing that is desired.

Simplicity helps your customers and it can make it easier for you and your customers and free up time.

Have you ever taken steps to simplify your products or services to stand out in your market?

Photo: taken from website.

But it can turn out to be a much simpler path to follow if you want greater results from your marketing efforts.

Many small business owners shy away from market segmentation and one reason is the fear of missing out. This is especially so when they start up and need customers to get some income happening.

But is does come back to bite you as it is too time consuming and wastes money going after groups of potential customers that will never buy what you offer.

Market Segmentation

Market segmentation has been around for a long time. It is simplify dividing up a total market and identifying the different groups of people with common characteristics. In fact I have developed a market segmentation program to help you.

Unless you learn which segments are worth targeting you end up with hit and miss results.

Take an example from your personal life. You have a number of people who you connect with, from your immediate family to your neighbours to the people you work with.

If you were trying to work out how to communicate certain news you wouldn’t send the same message in the same way to everyone. In fact you may even ignore one group because it isn’t relevant to them.

The same goes for a celebration dinner where you have to bring a dish. Knowing who will be attending, the type of celebration it is and what their preferences are all helps you decide what to bring.

This is the same thing in marketing and it pays to ignore certain segments as it is just not profitable to try and attract and retain everyone.

Working out the customer segments and build a customer profile simplifies your decisions regarding your marketing strategies:

Marketing Decisions

There have always been 4 and some now like to include people, however whatever the number your decisions will always revolve around your customer relationships.

Some of the advantages of market segmentation are:

Products/Services – you are able to refine what you offer based on their preferences and needs rather than being generic.

Price – the guesswork is taken out these decisions and you be able to identify the pricing limits that for your market segments.

Marketing tactics – understanding the needs and desires of your market segments means you can develop your communication that you know will have work.

It also means that you don’t have to follow the latest ‘should’ as you have reference points and know what marketing activities are the most appropriate.

It is easy to fall into the trap of complexity however taking small steps to embracing simplicity is far more rewarding in the long run.

Marketing Simplicity Tip:

Start looking at the common characteristics of your repeat customers and if you are interested in seeing what the market segmentation guide looks like Click Here.

Now over to you, have you used market segmentation for your business?

When I asked him if all companies that briefed him provided the details of their positioning, Vincent said they didn’t.

If you provide services and need this information then you would know how tough that makes your job when you don’t get it.

And as the marketer of your brand, if you don’t know your positioning then you can waste time and/or money on your marketing activities.

Unfortunately you can’t just sit down with your copywriter or designer and work it out during a briefing as it takes time and thought.

That said Vincent mentioned one thing he does at trade shows that got me thinking of a simple exercise which could help.

Too often when some businesses try and work out a brand’s positioning they do it by themselves and in isolation.

This is the difficult path to follow.

Comparisons

Sometimes looking at what you are promising to deliver versus your competitors can simplify the whole process. It has been done in research for decades as part of the process and takes some of the subjectivity out of it.

It is no good developing your positioning in isolation and find out afterwards your competitors are saying and showing the same thing as you.

Get help

To make this easier get someone who will give you an honest assessment as it can be easier than doing it on your own. Ideally it should be someone from your target market or who has experience in this area.

Show them your communication and a couple of your competitors and simply ask what is the promise and point of difference.

Getting your positioning right is not always an easy task especially if your market is competitive. However it is necessary if you want a thriving and profitable business.

One thing to note is don’t take it to heart if they don’t say what you want.  Instead see it as an opportunity to review and refine as your positioning is not static.

Did you or have you got feedback or help when you developed your brand’s positioning? 

If you don’t get the balance right then you may unknowingly be causing your customers stress.

Just like you, your customers are busy and they have many things to do in their lives. Adding more things for them to think about can add complexity to their lives.

This includes new products or services or adding more features to them.  Also how and where you communicate with your customers.

Overload

It is natural to want a closer relationship and sell more products or services.  After all you want to build a successful business.

The trouble is other businesses are thinking along the same lines. And this means customers are faced with a large number of decisions every day.

For example you want to connect with them in social media, so you suggest all the places you are involved with.

If other businesses do the same it can mean they have dozens of places they are invited to join and nobody who has a life could keep up or be involved with all of it.

Simplify It

One way to save yourself time and help you customers is to simplify your marketing. And the way to do that is to step back and look at what you are doing and see if cutting back will lessen their overload.

Making life easier for them and can help the relationship. As well it can less the complexity in your life as well.

For example if you find your key customers favour one social platform, do you really need to connect with them on the others where they are not as active?

Finding out their preferences can be one step to help with this.

In terms of your products or services, before you add another product or service to your offering, think about whether it is going to make their life easier or add to the clutter of what is already available.

Finding out more about your customers can lead to simpler marketing for you, greater results and stronger relationships.

How do you make life easier for your customers?

Photo source : Arena Creative

Offer free stuff and hope they will eventually buy your service or product.

While there are advantages, free can be expensive for your business especially if they never buy from you.

For service based businesses there can be a long wait for customers to move to pay you especially if you have been giving away your expertise for free.

You may also find customers like what you provide for free but may not be able to pay full price.

So they lose out and so do you.

The Marketing Opportunity

This doesn’t have to be the case and there can be another option by following the example of Mercedes Benz and other luxury car manufacturers.

In the past those who wanted one of these cars had to wait until they could afford them as they were very expensive. Some models retail for over $200,000.

However they realised that there was an opportunity to get the customer involved with their cars earlier in their lives.

Doing some research I found the cheapest Mercedes Benz car was around $23,000. It has less features, power etc than the dearer cars, but not out of reach for those who want to be associated with the brand.

And as their customers’ wealth grows they have the opportunity to trade up over time.

Entry Level Option

Potential customers may not be able to afford your service at the moment. As you do not want to reduce your price and you shouldn’t they go and find a cheaper option.

They probably know it will not be the same as you would provide but they do not have another option.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to create a DIY product from your service with step by step instructions. This product obviously wouldn’t have all the features your full service provides but like Mercedes Benz it can benefit you and your customers.

Advantages

• If your customers are small businesses for example remember they may grow into larger ones and it is often the earliest relationships that are treasured as they grow.
• Customers get to taste the experience of what you offer even in a basic way. And as with cars when they can afford to they are able to trade up later to your premium service.
• It saves your customers time because they do not have to continue searching for someone to help them.
• You have offered a simple solution that helps your customers and your business.

Over to you. Have you considered or do you offer a base level option for your customers?

Having this understanding saves you time and money by helping you optimise your website content to get the results you desire.

And it makes this part of marketing simpler.

The same goes for understanding the key attributes that are associated closely with your brand.

These words and phrases helps you work out your key point of difference and your brand positioning.

And as I and many others have written the more you know how your customers think, feel and behave the easier it is to have a successful brand.

As well it takes out the guesswork which can remove unnecessary stress when marketing your brand.

Positioning

When you develop your positioning one area that can give you real insights into how customers think and feel about your brand is key attributes.

Attributes can be words or phrases and every brand has attributes associated with it. Just like people some are positive and some may be negative, after all no brand or person is perfect.

The key is to understand the ones that are associated with your brand that mean the most to current and potential customers and differentiates your brand from competitors.

Benefits

• Helps refine your brand’s positioning so all communication is single minded.
• Assists in how you use and implement marketing activities and tools so that they reinforce the attributes consistently.
• Helps when you brief a designer or copywriter etc.
• Can open up new product or service development opportunities.
• Helps with the pricing of your products or services.
• Stops you being a me too brand in your market.
• Shows you where you need to make adjustments to strengthen customer relationships.
• Helps you improve your communication online and offline.

Finding out about your key attributes can be done by surveying your customers and gaining feedback.

You can also gain information by listening and observing what your customers say. Gathering this information is part of what you need when creating a customer profile which is part of the market segmentation program.

What other benefits would you add to this list?

Unsuspecting visitors wander into the town looking for a store or bar that is opened.

The silence is everywhere.

What happened?

Why did everyone leave?

Where have they gone?

These scenes are also played out today with marketing activities and tools especially when you don’t have the right marketing strategy in place.

Your Facebook account initially got the love and interaction with customers was rewarding for both.

Then you got sidetracked or busy and the interaction decreased. Slowly people began to leave as nothing was happening and  you may not have noticed until too late.

All of a sudden there has not been any activity and it joins the “must get back into it” conversion you have with yourself. Except nobody cares any more.

What you forget are the signals these abandoned sites say about your brand can hurt your marketing success.

Customers’ Perceptions

Many websites have a blog and buttons so people can join them on Twitter, Facebook etc.

To find out more they may click on your blog and see it has not been updated for months. Or they may click on your join me on Twitter and find your last tweet was Have a Merry Christmas for 2011.

These little signals form part of customers’ perceptions on such areas as reliability, consistency, caring.

Relieve The Stress

As there will only ever be 24 hours in a day, trying to cram more activities into it can’t work.

As abandoned sites and accounts are not desirable, to relieve the stress you could try the following:

Outsource

There are pros and cons of outsourcing depending on your business and customers.

However if you make a business decision that a blog for example is a vital part of your marketing tactics then the investment of someone writing it is worth it.

The one thing to note here is if articles have your name on them you still need to respond to comments.

Close Them Down

Yes it is decision time.

Review what results you have got from these platforms and activities as well as a realistic assessment of your time.

Don’t be scared to close the accounts down as you may be surprised the relief you feel when you don’t have the pressure of keeping up appearances.

You may disagree with me but I think it is better not to have a presence on social media platforms or have a blog highlighted on your website than one that is rarely updated.

Love to hear your thoughts on this. How do you prevent the ghost town syndrome?

Marketing 101.

Without giving customer a reason you run the risk of being yet another me too business.

The never ending list of choices today means customers have to think more when looking for solutions and buying which puts more pressure on their time.

One way to help customers through this dilemma is to make it easier for them.

Instead of looking and following what others do in your category sometimes marketing ideas can be obtained simply by looking at totally unrelated areas.

These ideas may then be able to be adapted to your business and marketing.

For example shopping for ingredients to make a salad.

Here are a few steps you may take:

• Go to each section of the supermarket or fruit and vegetable shop to gather the ingredients
• Visit the salad dressing section and make a choice amongst the many varieties on offer
• Wash, chop, slice or dice each ingredient
• Place in a bowl add dressing and serve.

Or

• You can go to the supermarket buy the pre-packaged fresh salad mix with dressing included
• Place it in a bowl, add the dressing and serve.

Instead of many steps the pre-packaged salad saves time even though customers may be paying more. But time saved is one thing many people want especially if they are busy.

If you have a service business, perhaps there is an opportunity to save your customers time and differentiate your brand by eliminating steps that everyone makes customers go through.

This could include the process of making the buying decision as well as the steps involved in delivering the service.

Simplify the process, eliminate steps and package it up.

Instead of offering your products or services the same way as everyone else, eliminating features or steps can be an advantage and due to the simplicity you may be able to charge a premium.

Just like the pre-packaged salad.

Have you ever looked outside your market for ideas that could simplify the process for your customers? If you have, please share your story.

Now busy is good if it is bringing in the revenue you want and you have time for a personal life.

If you aren’t then it might mean you have cluttered up the marketing of your brand.

This can lead to wrong decisions and affect your revenue and profit.

Just like the rooms in your home you can’t put it off unless you want to stay busy all the time.

Some of the signs that you need to get rid of some of the clutter includes:

• The only revenue base is from selling your time
• Your presence is not consistent with your chosen networking channels
• You get sidetracked by the latest tactic
• One day you will get an email list up and running
• Your revenue depends on finding new clients all the time
• You are still waiting for time to work out your key difference to competitors
• You start and then stop marketing tactics due to time availability
• One day is something you say to yourself often
• You sometimes wish someone would just get you organised and on track
• You can’t remember when you last looked at your analytics to improve your results
• You are working longer hours but this is not reflecting in revenue increases.

Most of us have gone through this and it also occurs in large companies.

To build you business and not be a slave to it conducting a marketing review is needed. This way you can see what to get rid of, where the gaps are and where you need to concentrate your efforts.

Then you can get organised and be confident the marketing strategy and tactics will get the results you desire.

Just like cleaning out a messy room you may be surprised at what you find and how much simpler running your business is.

What tips do you have to get rid of clutter?

The bigger the pain and fear, the greater opportunity for your business or so they say.

But is this true?

I read an interesting article by Graham Jones – Fear is not a motivation to buy on the weekend.

He highlighted recent research that suggests the pain path may not be the way to go for every brand. In fact it could be stopping customers taking the action.

This makes sense and he debunks a key internet marketing aspect in his article as well so make sure you read the article.

Pain

When you are focusing on pain and solution unless you do research it can be difficult to work out where on the pain scale your customers are.

Is it mild frustration, a little niggle or does it feel like a full blown migraine?

If you don’t know you are left with making assumptions which can take complicate your marketing.

Pleasure

Instead of thinking of pain perhaps there is an opportunity to look at the pleasure side.

It is not so much focusing on the benefits of your products or services. Instead identify the emotions that they want to feel as a person.

Then you are able to see how your brand fits, your difference, benefits etc.

Opportunity

By looking at the pleasure side of the emotions it gives you an opportunity to help your customers deepen the emotional feeling with your brand.

It also makes it easier to communicate your difference versus competitors. And it adds simplicity for your business and customers.

This way does not apply to every single market as some do need to hone in on the problem or pain aspect.

However if you think your products or services may benefit from looking at the pleasure versus focusing in on the pain why not try it and see if it makes sense.

As always would love you to share your thoughts on this.

While this is easy to say it can be difficult to do.

However if you don’t then developing a smart marketing strategy is pretty much impossible.

What can happen are similar products and services are offered with little difference. And this can be confusing for customers when making buying decisions.

Looking to buy a product from Zappos on the weekend I was going through their website and found an idea we can learn from.

And no it is not just customer service or happiness.

If you look at little deeper you can see Zappos have built in processes to ensure the happiness for their customers.

If you think about it buying online something like shoes or fashion in general has some problems attached.

You can’t try them on, you may find that red pair of shoes is the wrong shade or the shirt is just that little too tight when you receive them.

Instead of ignoring these potential problems they have taken any purchase risk away from the customer.

Just look at their website and you see free shipping, free returns etc.

They made it simple for customers and turn a potential barrier to purchase into a real benefit and difference.

Here are a couple of things we can learn from this approach that could help you make a simple differentiation from competitors.

Market

In any market there are always certain basics that you must meet to compete.

Are their potential barriers from a customers’ point of view that stops them from buying your type of products or services?

If you can identify an important one and develop a simple solution this could make a difference and set your business apart from your competitors.

Marketing Strategy

See how you can build this difference into your products or services, your key message and all processes dealing with customers.

Offering the same in the same way is a tough way to do business.

Looking to make something as simple as possible can make a big difference when developing your marketing strategy to attract and retain customers.

As always would love you to share your thoughts on this.

The idea is about taking photos uploaded to Facebook and taking them offline line to be printed and shared.

The good old fashioned photo book.

According to the article they have sold 80,000 photo books throughout the world and it seems the business is thriving.

It is not only a good example of simplicity, it also shows that there are opportunities to be realised if you look at the online and offline world in total.

Instead of thinking they must be separate or in competition.

Here are a few lessons we can learn from this example:

Marketing Mix

So often marketing is thought to be about communication only.

By looking at all aspects of marketing, simple ideas can mean growing your business instead of going out of business.

Market Trends

In the article they use the words “fish where the fish are” which is fundamental but sometimes forgotten.

In this case people are sharing photos online which gave them the idea.

Observing customer trends such as their behaviour could spark inspiration. Try using a mind map to do a little brainstorming to see if there are opportunities for your business.

Free Into Sales

People are sharing photos with their friends and others online for free. This is also happening in many areas of business such as information.

Often businesses see this as a threat and it can be. However there may be opportunities to add something simple to free that customers will pay for.

Focus

If they had a diverse business this opportunity may not have been so easily spotted.

The more focused your business model especially if you are a solo or small business the easier it is to take advantage of opportunities.

Things change rapidly today. Having a focus or specialisation means you may be able to capitalise on a potential opportunity quicker than others with a more diverse range of products or services.

All these of course depend on having the right marketing strategy in place for your business.

These are just a few lessons so please add others that you have experienced or seen that we can learn from.

It is about your market value and pricing.

One way to look at the market value of what your offer is across a couple of dimensions.

Knowledge and skills.

The more knowledge and skill the higher the price.

An easy example of this is medicine. A brain or heart surgeon is paid more than a general practitioner.

To become a doctor specialising in brain surgery takes greater knowledge and specific skills.

Now not everyone wants to be a surgeon.

Some doctors are more than happy being a GP even though they know they can’t charge as much as a surgeon.

It is the same in the business world. Some of you may like to be generalists. Some see the potential for your business by being specialists.

It really is up to you.

Competition

Some of you may be underpricing your products or services. This is because you could be offering specialised products or services but comparing your market value to those that are generalists.

On the other side if it is tough competing against those who have the specialised knowledge and skills.

If you offering the same range as every other business, you might want to consider if there is potential to more specialised offerings to up your market value.

Understanding where your products and services fit in is important as it can guide you with your offerings and pricing.

Knowledge and skills

Learning and developing skills are applicable to all businesses. You can of course hire or outsource to gain the knowledge and skills to increase your businesses market value.

Or you can increase your own knowledge and skills. And there are a number of online and offline courses, books etc you can tap into.

To increase your skills it can sometimes be as simple as putting in the practice under the guidance of someone who can help, coach or mentor you.

Whether it is sport or business the more you do something and improve each time the more your skills will increase.

What are your thoughts on this topic? How do you increase your market value?

Photo credit: Dani Simmonds