The End of Wishful Thinking

What traps startup entrepreneurs and SMB owners in an endless disappointment with their financial results?

You’ll hear excuses such as too much competition, high taxes, corporate favoritism, technical complications, lack of talent, uncommitted employees, technology, changing customer demands, heavy expenses, bad luck, lack of time and funding, and low reach, and of course the perennial, consumers are idiots.

Many small to mid sized business owners simply don’t realize that the goal and the means to get there are two different things. Now is the time to focus on the ship that will take you on your journey. That ship is website marketing pages and blogs, case studies, technical sheets, social media site, paid ads, and sharable content that carries your UVP to the market. The ship will give you the reach.

A good case in point is Upstart the start up AI powered loan origination service that’s now enjoying strong success. Much of their current software marketing is organic through blogs, plus some strong ppc advertising.

It is reach, but there’s more. You must have a free gift of value that builds relevance with them, helps establish your UVP, and cuts their risk.  For instance, I offer a digital marketing audit that helps them gain insight into what’s wrong and offers advice, and allows them to test my problem solving skills and ability to add value.

Start Delivering Value Now

Yes, it’s our inspiration that drives us to launch a new business that gets in our way. And when we say people fail because they get in their own way, we kinda mean, you need to focus on the vehicle that will take you to your audience, where you can bring them on board. You need focus on getting access to the audience and delivering your UVP expertly.  This is the how you get rid of competition and take control of the market.

My Vision is Getting in My Way

That’s right, your personal inspiration for whatever you do, is actually what prevents you from getting the practical work done that builds these sales relationships.

Let’s look at the practical action you need to take to turn your supposed “market potential” into a market leading enterprise. My hope is that one day, I can help you build an exceptional business, yet like an award winning recipe, there’s some essential ingredients we’ll have to negotiate. Without the ingredients the market demands, it’s unlikely you’ll have the superpowers to make it happen.

The Essential Ingredients

• advanced analytics tools to help you discover the best unique value proposition
• finding and focusing on profit centers (not generalizing)
• a powerful digital marketing solution to help you your target audience and deliver your brand message in a masterful way
• research tools to help you define the market and what they want
• a great website that communicates the value you offer
• social media engagement with the right target audience
• sufficient funding to buy what must be bought
• skilled employees/contractors who bring in special capabilities
• top industry connections who support the value you provide

The essential ingredients are a project in themselves. If we focus intensely on the most relevant, personalized and unique value proposition, then all of these ingredients fall in line. Of course, focusing on your key profit centers does take courage and confidence in your knowledge of the market.  It may be, that your knowledge of the market is everything.

An Intense Focus on Your Target Market

If you don’t have the UVP the market wants, you won’t obtain the funding, tools, marketing power, staff, and connections needed to excel.  They want to know you’re number one.

Achieving UVP competence isn’t easy.

If you’re a sales pro and a deal maker, you are attuned to these things. The value proposition for a business is a grouping of all these elements and you discover this as you try to sell the solution.  If the solution doesn’t match the market need, sales gets really tough.

Those who have funding, brand visibility, and sales channels might think they’ve got this thing covered.  However, competitors can see where you draw success from and they can take over those channels.  It’s only an intense commitment to your relevant, personalized UVP that generates sales.

What I’ve learned about this process is that it takes a lot of time, energy and insight, to build a winning UVP.  In fighting against huge, well funded corporate market leaders, its their weight, visibility and focus that gives them an advantage even though their product/service is flawed.  Focusing all your resources to build the best UVP and getting that communicated can give you the edge on them. From inflexibility to local irrelevance, they have so many weaknesses.

Your new UVP might incorporate some ingenious benefits of relevance and utility that big competitors simply can’t delivery.

To establish value in your target market’s mind, you have to do a lot of work. It’s not just content in blogs, social media posts, emails, and sales transactions.

Common marketers focus on consistency and persistence. What they know is that dominating customers short term memory in a most accessible way, leads to long term memory dominance. That’s brand building.
Exceptional marketers learn to use more creative, surprising, and unique ways to access customers emotions.

AI marketing tools won’t do all that for you. That’s a gimmick. You must leverage the best creative people’s ability to generate content that touches customer’s hearts and minds in a way that’s relevant to them. Your analytics will help. And AI can help with timely delivery.

Hiring Talented, Motivated Contractors is What it’s All About Today

There’s no replacing the incredible problem solving power of people. Anyone can do it. They only have to want to do it. Intent is powerful. Even corporations are trying to hire talented, remote contractors because they know this is where the production power is today.

Ready to get it right?  After meeting with you to discuss your dream, your market, your customers, we can build a content based marketing strategy to give you lasting sales through SEO, social media, and ppc campaigns.

There is no magic bullet in business or marketing, just an intelligent process for improvement until you are the winner. Get it right and it won’t take as long as it could. You decide right now how long that’s going to take.  Good advice is to optimize the process and get it done fast.

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