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Business is about transactions – the exchange of products, services, information, money, good-will, referrals, expertise, ideas, contacts, leads, etc.
As business people and consumers, we make these transactions with people or brands that we TRUST. In other words, we don’t give money to people or brands that we feel will not give us value for our dollar.
Big multi-national brands like H&R Block, Budweiser, JP Morgan or Whole Foods spend millions of dollars on advertising to convince you that they are worthy of your trust.
How do they do it?
Easy – they put their message EVERYWHERE! In fact, I would be willing to bet that you have seen or heard some form of advertising from one of these brands within the past 24 hours.
Your Tiny Business Can’t Be Everywhere – But It Doesn’t Need To Be
I am guessing you are not a huge corporate brand manager — and if you are please watch the video in the upper right of this blog!
Let’s assume that you are:
- not H&R Block, but a small CPA firm.
- not Budweiser, but a small micro-brewing company.
- not JP Morgan but a small financial planning organization.
- not Whole Foods, but a tiny organic foods market.
Your CPA firm does not need the amount of sales that H&R Block needs to be profitable, your brewing company does not need to sell as much beer as AB-InBev does to turn a dime. Therefore, you don’t need to be doing the amount of traditional advertising they are doing to gain trust — in fact, you don’t need to be doing any traditional advertising.
Why They Advertise and You Shouldn’t
These big brands are advertising because (as we established) they need to establish trust with you in order to have the possibility of doing business with you.
They gain this trust through repetitive messaging — the mantra goes something like this:
“We are trustworthy. Buy our stuff. We provide value. Buy our stuff.”
Isn’t that basically what every print, radio or television ad is trying to convey?
It still works for these big brands — it just isn’t as effective as it used to be.
Why?
Because YOU (the tiny business owner reading this —– yes YOU!) now have the ability to reach out and communicate with an enormous audience through the Internet.
IMPORTANT:
You Have the Same Reach That The Big Brands Have Online — You Can Have Transactions With As Many People As They Can!
How To Win Against Large Competitors
Instead of going toe to toe with large brands in the television, radio or print channels — market through the Internet by building VALUABLE relationships with your clients.
The big brands are creating relationships by repeatedly putting their message in front of you — but these ads are not VALUABLE. You can differentiate yourself from large competitors by being more personal, more relevant, and more VALUABLE to your prospects.
Start providing your target market with repeated interactions that provide benefit to them. Create good content and GIVE IT to them on a regular basis.
These acts of charity will build trust for you and your company. Repeated free “transactions” with your business will ultimately lead to paid sales and quality referrals.
Consider the giving away of VALUABLE content as a marketing cost — only it won’t cost you millions of dollars in television, radio and print ads — it will only cost you TIME.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m still checking out all this stuff. Thanks for posting. Phil
Great Phil. I am glad you are looking into this. I think it would be great for what both you and Judy are doing.
Some big brands doesn’t use advertising at all, such as Google, Nokia, facebook, bodyshop, etc. Any ideas on how they do it??
cheers
Hi Ryan, you are right. For years, Red Bull didn’t do any traditional advertising either. In fact, I remember reading that it was part of their marketing plan to use guerrilla tactics like events, etc to market their product in an almost mysterious, word-of-mouth fashion.