Get Slightly Famous: Become a Celebrity in Your Field and Attract More Business With Less Effort:Excerpts
From BookJive
CHAPTER 1 - Just a Little Fame will Do
Some business owners seem to attract clients and customers by magic. Their marketing seem effortless. They may not have made a cold call in years, they may not spend an the way movie stars and top athletes are famous -- they are just slightly famous. Just famous enough to make their names come to mind when people are looking for a particular product or service, and let them reap the benefits. They get more business -- not only more, but the right kind of business -- and they don't have to work so hard to get it.
Want to join them and enjoy this ideal state of affairs, where customers come to you? You can, but it may require a new way of thinking and a new marketing strategy. And though, it may seem effortless to the outside observer, it does require work.
The Slightly Famous You
In a crowded marketplace, where your potential clients and customers have lots of choices, you can stand out by being just slightly famous. This is the exact opposite of mass marketing. It’s not about being all things to all people. It’s about targeting your market and developing a reputation as a great resource -- trustworthy, knowledgeable, and close at hand. Your goal is to become the lord of a small, profitable domain of your choosing. You will attract more customers and clients, including those you want most.
Naturally, such results require thoughtful and consistent efforts. These efforts will take many different forms, but underlying and guiding them are just six basic principles:
- Targeting the best prospects
- Developing a unique market niche
- Positioning your business as the best solution
- Maintaining your visibility
- Enhancing your credibility
- Establishing your brand and reputation
Working on these principles is your recipe for getting out of the anonymity trap, creating a slightly famous you, and building a successful business. In the pages that follow, we’ll look more closely at what these principles call for in the way of action on your part.
Targeting the Best Prospects
Market research is like sticking your toe into a lake before jumping in. If you know who you want to reach and what their needs are, you avoid wasting time and money in poorly conceived marketing programs. You can alter your products or services to fit the needs of your target market, and you can craft a message that reflects your business and your customer. Moreover, market research need not involve expensive consultants, surveys, or focus groups - it can be as simple as asking your best customers the right questions.
For example, Larry Klein discovered his target market from the inside. A successful financial advisor, he retired from his primary job and became a marketing guru to other financial professionals. He knew they needed several kinds of marketing help, but as he talked to them and worked with them, he discovered that what they wanted most were ways to reach seniors.
Klein explains, “I’m not 60. So, you don’t have to be a member of your ideal marketplace. But, if you talked to enough people in that market group, you’re going to get it. You have to be awake and aware and be listening for what it is.”
“All the information you need to target and succeed in an ideal marketplace is out there waiting to be found,” says Klein. “You can take the guesswork out of building a business.”
Having talked to enough seniors to understand their needs, Klein refined a series of methods for approaching them with investment opportunities. Now, he offers seminars and writes articles about these strategies, and offers himself as a consultant to his former colleagues. You and I may not have heard of him, but within his targeted sector of the financial planning community, Klein is slightly famous.
Developing a Unique Market Niche
Large companies aspire to total market domination. Small businesses with a “slightly famous” strategy flourish by establishing themselves within a carefully selected segment of a market; they target a market niche that they can realistically hope to dominate.
Market niches can be defined by region, by special customer needs, or by demographics, such as a particular ethnic or age group; sometimes a market niche can be generated just by a product that’s a variation on an established one. (Interestingly, the word niche, which comes from French, means “nest.” As a small business, you want to build your nest somewhere away from the hawks of big business.)
Positioning your Business as the Best Solution
In a crowded marketplace, it may not be enough just to carve out a niche. You’ve narrowed your focus, but you still have competitors. This is the time to distinguish yourself as the pre-eminent source of solutions by refining your expertise and conveying it to your target audience. You need to know more about something, or be better at something, than anyone else, and you have to let people know.
When you can honestly convey such a message, potential customers and clients see you as the obvious answer to their problems and challenges, and the logical choice when they’re looking for a supplier.
Maintaining Your Visibility
When was the last time your name appeared in print? Yesterday? Last week? A month ago? Even if you remember, that doesn’t mean a potential customer will.
One key to succeeding in the marketplace is to have your message out there, if not continuously, then often enough to keep your name alive in customer’s minds. This is the meaning of visibility, and if you’re not visible to your potential clients, you cease to exist. If you haven’t done any marketing in months, you’ll miss getting clients because they forget about you, and instead call your competitor, whose name was in this morning’s paper.
Visibility is a cornerstone of every “slightly famous” business strategy, and it begins by placing your core marketing message in front of as many of your target customers as possible, as often as possible.
Enhancing Your Credibility
Visibility, of course, is only a means. To produce results, visibility must be combined with credibility. This means that you need to embrace visibility strategies that display your distinction, competence, expertise, authority and leadership -- and this is where the slightly famous strategies in this book go beyond marketing strategies that rely on advertising.
“Exposure plus 95 cents might buy you a decent cup of coffee,” says networking expert Bob Burg. “The key is to position yourself in your market as the expert, the resource, the only person your prospect would ever even think of doing business with, or referring to others.”
The surest way to make a credible name for yourself is by becoming a “recognized” expert. Who counts as an expert? Experts include authors, speakers, consultants, business owners, managers and professionals. If you have an in-depth knowledge about a specific subject -- and that subject can be your business -- you qualify, too. The test is how much you know and if you know a lot about something, you can leverage that knowledge into a halo of authority. As an authority, you can write articles for trade and special interest publications (if you’re too busy to write, or uncertain of your writing skills, it’s easy to find help - use the Web or the Yellow Pages to look for “Editing and Writing Services”). You can give talks.
