Entrepreneurs Night Out Blog

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake #5

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake #5. Not being predominantly focused on marketing.

The most successful organizations in the world understand that they are basically in
the business of marketing. NO matter what they produce or sell they are in the
marketing business.

Take Mcdonalds for example. What do you think they spend more resources on:
1) Developing delicious and nutritious burgers?
Or
2) Marketing?

I hope for the sake of your bank account you said marketing. Marketing and selling
should be your primary focus 24/7.

The old adage about “if you build a better mouse trap people will beat a path to
your door” just doesn’t apply to our modern world. First of all it’s getting harder and
harder to produce something that’s significantly improved and even if you do, it
won’t take long for the competition to catch up.

Second: Never in the history of the world have we been inundated with so many
marketing messages. Unless you sit and stare at a wall at home everyday, it is
almost impossible to NOT see and hear hundreds of advertising messages a day.

So even if you did have a way better product, the world will probably never hear
about it if your marketing is not up to scratch. It will simply drown in the sea of
marketing messages.

Peter Drucker, the father of management consulting said:
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise
has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and
innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing,
unique function of the business.

You have three options in business today and 3 options only.
1) You either become a master marketer.
2) You hire master marketers.
3) Die broke (and probably miserable)

After I went bankrupt 22 years ago I sat down and analysed what the heck just
happened. I came up with a list of 28 errors. 21 of them had to do with marketing!!
Marketing was not my strong suit and I hated selling, but I realized I had to change
if I was to make it in the world of business.

So I started to become a student of the art and science of marketing and
persuasion. This is probably the best business decision I ever made

You might think that it takes too long to learn marketing. But first of all that’s like
saying it takes too long to learn how to survive.

And second is actually doesn’t take long to master marketing. What takes a lot
longer is getting through all the worthless sh#@ and outdated stuff that people
publish and sell on the internet today. When you find someone that really knows
their stuff and are willing to share it you can learn it really fast

Just within the last year I’ve bumped into 2 mentors that more than doubled my
opt-in and response rates. This didn’t take me more than a few days to learn and
implement what they showed me.

My Final Point Is MARKETING WILL BE A CRUCIAL SURVIVAL TECHNIQUE IN THE FUTURE.

If you only know how to compete on quality and price the Chinese and
Japanese will eat you alive.

Have a brilliant day – Patrick Powers

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake #4

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake #4. Not being different.

Ok so you shouldn’t be too original and at the same time be different. How do you
do that?

Well the trick is to take something that someone is already doing successfully and
improve it slightly or simply be different. As godaddy.com founder Bob Parson says
“you have to have an edge”. In fact he says this is his # 1 success strategy.

If you are just starting out and you are doing exactly the same as existing
companies why would customers buy from you? If there is no special reason and
benefit to buy from you, they will continue to buy where they have so far.

Even many established businesses are making the error of not being different.
In fact I often ask business owners “why should I buy from you and not your
competition”? Most of the time they can’t come up with anything other than
“because we are the best”.

Well what do you think the competitors are saying? We are so-so? No of course
they are going to say the same thing.

So saying “we are the best” or “we have the best quality” doesn’t differentiate you
from the competition. Therefore you wont get noticed and your potential customers
don’t have any special reasons to buy from you. So what are some areas you can
improve to create that edge? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Friendlier customer service, faster delivery, bigger selection, lower price, more
convenience, better marketing, your personality. Start noticing what could be
improved in businesses where you are a customer.

If you have already started a business or made up your mind about the business
you are going to start, you should research what makes the competition successful.
When you know that, you can come up with something different that would be a
benefit to the customer.

For example in my business www.gobiggerseminars.com we are in the business
skills and success/wealth training field. I noticed that especially in the UK very few
of my competitors had a guarantee for results or had pretty weak guarantees.

So we decided we should have a “Profit or Don’t Pay” policy. If you think what you
learn from us didn’t work for you, you simply get your money back with a smile.
Some of our courses have a “Double your money or its free” guarantee.

I also found that most of seminars I went to focused mostly on theory and not much
practical application. What was an even bigger problem was that there was no
follow up to help the students implement what they learned. Many times they simply
never started using it.

So we decided that follow up training and implementation was going to be one of
our strengths.

Remember this principle and USE it for the rest of your business life:
BE DIFFERENT or DIE

Stay tuned for the last startup entrepreneur mistake in this series.

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake # 3

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake  3: Starting something nobody has ever done before.

There is this misconception among many startup entrepreneurs that you have to
come up with a brilliant idea that nobody has done before, like a google or
something earth-shatteringly brilliant and new.

With a very very few exceptions this is completely stupid. Sorry if I offended you but
I believe it’s better that I shock you and wake you up to the realities of business
than letting you go on to an almost certain bankruptcy.

Or worse .. that you never start your first business because you think you have to
have a brilliant and original idea.

Trying to do something that has never been done before is very risky. You could be
facing a market that doesn’t understand your breakthrough and it will take a lot of
time and money to educate the them.

Yes, if you pull it off it could be your ticket to untold riches and fame but you don’t
have to be brilliantly original to achieve that.

Take Mark Zuckerberg for example. When he founded Facebook it wasn’t a
completely new idea. He just did it in a new way that the market appreciated more.
Last time I checked he was only worth 15 gazillions and among the youngest
billionaires in the world. ( The actual number (2010) is a personal wealth of is $4
billion).

By far the biggest amount of money in the world is made by taking something that
is already being sold and then improve it slightly or sell it better.

This is also the most safe route to take if you are a new startup. There are so many
advantages of doing this.

First of all you don’t have to guess whether it will work.
If you have successful competitors you know there is a market for it.
But you probably don’t want to go into an old industry. In old industries the
competition is fierce and profits slimmer.

You want to find something that is proven success, but at the same time a new
trend with a growing market. In new markets profits are higher and you have less
competition.

Stay tuned for startup entrepreneur mistake number 4

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake 2

Startup Entrepreneur Mistake 2: Not doing SERIOUS research on the competition.

Many years ago I read that Sam Walton (the founder of Wallmart) gave all his
managers a task to find one thing every month that the competitors were doing
better than themselves. As simple as this is, it’s also brilliant.

Everyone should be doing this. Especially in the startup phase it is so important to
understand what makes the competition successful. If you don’t understand this
how can you position yourself as a better choice to potential customers?

Well …….you can’t. I’m totally baffled about how many business people don’t
monitor or even know their competitors.

And today it is so easy to spy on the competition that it’s almost scary.
The first thing you should to is go to www.google.com set up a “google alert” with
your competitors business and product names. Then google will alert you every
time something is mentioned online about the keywords you asked them to alert
you about. This will be sent to your email on a daily basis. This is just one of several
things you could and should do.

And please don’t tell me you don’t have any competition for your product or
business. When someone say this, it’s another clear sign that there are headed for
the slaughterhouse.

Ok so you might be the only “bogo-bogo berry” company in town but there will be
thousands of other companies that promises approximately or exactly the same
benefits.

And even if you had something totally unique it’s only a matter of time before
someone knocks it off or come up with something even better or your patent runs
out.

If you want to be successful in business YOU MUST RESEARCH AND MONITOR
THE COMPETITION.

Stay tuned for startup entrepreneur mistake number 3