Newbie looking for advice and support.

Not at all. You still need to work while building a side business. The experience from the work you are doing will transfer over anyway. So alls good.

Marketing principles pretty much stay the same. The difference in your approach will be down to whether you are selling information, a service, or physical products.

A basic overview:

PHILOSOPHY:

What does your business stand for? What does it stand against? Who is your audience? What are their problems? How is your service/product different than your competitors?

What do you optimize for? Zappos optimized for 'delivering happiness'. FEDEX optimized for 'overnight delivery'. Volvo optimized for 'safety'.

You'll notice how they are really optimizing for 'peace of mind' - 'convenience' - and/or 'certainty'.

Ask yourself: What does my audience not like about my industry? What do they not trust about my industry? What are my competitors missing in this area that I can optimize for?

Just something to keep in mind.


ANATOMY: (4 parts)

1. Identify:

At the philosophy phase you gathered (hopefully) data on your broad audience. When marketing you should pull from that pool of people and identify a much more specific target profile.

Example: A weight loss business has an audience of people who want to lose weight. Obviously. But when marketing, to stand out, you would dip into that pool of people and target, let's say, women over 50 who want to lose weight.

You can, of course, dip into that same pool of people and target women who just had a baby. And so on.

2. Attract:

Domino's did a fine job of attracting people with their '30 minutes or less' slogan. They sell food. They marketed fast delivery. Once again we see the 'convenience' being targeted instead of the actual 'utility' of what the company sells.

I have two pairs of Bluetooth earbuds I wear around the home. The first pair sound slightly better than the second pair. Since the 'utility' and purpose of the earbuds is to listen to music, you would think the first pair, which sound better, would be my preferred choice.

I use the second pair. I like them better. Why? Because they have magnets attached to the ear pieces which makes it 'convenient' for me to whip them off and stick them to the fridge, or whiteboard or just around my neck.

It seems even I prefer convenience over utility in this regard. Of course that won't always be the case.

Just something to keep in mind.

3. Seduce:

Joe Polish gave away a free report (nothing unique there) to people who were considering hiring a carpet cleaner. The report was a sales message that gave real value.

"10 things you must know before you even consider hiring a carpet cleaner"

What he was really doing was setting up a contrast between his service and the competitions. If you read his report where he outlined the common mistakes most carpet cleaners make, it positions him as the only option. The prospect is now faced with a dilemma...

If I choose anyone else, they will prob'ly make all or a couple of these 10 mistakes. If I choose 'Joe' I know he won't.

Again, he was selling 'convenience' and 'peace of mind'.

Have you got peace of mind if you hire another carpet cleaner, knowing the 10 common mistakes most of them make? Who knows? Better to be safe than sorry.

4. Propose:

How many marriage proposals get rejected? Very few. Why? Because the other 3 parts above made it possible to get a yes.


Look mate. I don't know your business. I don't know what you sell. I don't know much. So take what I said and just play with it. It's a general idea of how to go about setting up the strategy you were talking about.

Most marketing is linear. Logical. You'd do well to look at the "psychological" problems people are faced with and solve those problems as an "incentive" to choose you over your competition.

How many people put off hiring a plasterer because they hate the idea of having construction workers in their home? That's a psychological problem.

Being a plasterer myself, I can tell you, if more plasterers focused their entire marketing campaigns, and thus, their business, on making that "single" psychological (INTERNAL) problem much easier to digest, they would out sell any other company who just focuses on solving the 'utility' (EXTERNAL) problem, which they think, is the plastering of the walls.

You get me?