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longer is getting through all the worthless sh#@ and outdated stuff that people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

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.

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

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

IN the UK Only about 1 in 4 make it past the first 5-6 years. These numbers vary
greatly from country to country and some places it’s considerable worse.

And there is a dark side to being an entrepreneur that nobody really talks about.
It’s being trapped in a business that is only marginally profitable. Year after year
fighting to keep it going and growing, working longer hours, having more
headaches, more worries, sleepless nights and stress wearing you down.

Yes you have your freedom to be the captain of your own ship and all that, but lets
be honest here ….10-14 hours a day 6-7 days a week is not freedom.

I’m not sure if there is any statistics on businesses barely staying alive and how
many hours the owners work but I do know for sure that only about 3-4 % of our
population retires wealthy or well off and not all of them did through business.

So somewhere there is a lot of shattered dreams . So that’s all the bad news, the good news that it doesn’t have to be that way. Had I only known what I’m about to share with you today I would probably have
avoided my bankruptcy and become financially free in 5 years instead of 15.

In the next 4 days, I’m going to outline 5 Startup Entrepreneur mistakes. I’ve seen entrepreneurs make these 5 mistakes over and over again for over over 2 decades. From my own experience and from coaching and training with some of the biggest business geniuses alive I believe these are some of the most dangerous mistakes an entrepreneur can make. But let’s not delay any more. Here is:

Startup Entrepreneur Pitfall #1: Falling in love with your idea/product/service.
This might be one of the most important lessons, yet many people think that I have
lost it when I say this. After all, they have read in books on selling and that “you have to love your
product.”

See – here is the thing. When you are in love you don’t really see things for what
they are. You don’t see the realities and the warning signs. Especially in the
beginning.
Exactly the same thing happens when entrepreneurs are totally in love with their
idea or product. They are so confident about their idea that they think there is
practically no chance of failure.

People in this stage will say: “Everyone will want this”.
Oh boy have I heard this many times. It saddens me every time, because I know it’s
another delusional entrepreneur on the way to the slaughter house of commerce
and here’s why:

First of all: Saying “Everyone will want this” is flat out stupid.
There is not a single product or service on the planet that everyone wants. Ok
almost everybody might need it. But need and want are two totally different things
and to understand this distinction is crucial to survive and thrive in business.
Nobody need to eat Mcdonalds, but they want it. Actually people probably need to
NOT eat there but they still do it.

I once distributed a product that practically everyone needed. Many of my
competitors thought that everybody would want it and that the product would sell
itself.

But I understood that no product will appeal to everyone, I found out who really
wanted this product. Not just the people that needed it. Because I knew exactly who
wanted it (and why) I could target my marketing very precisely and communicate to
them in a way that they responded to.

This became my first real business success and it was in fact so successful that I
practically retired and for years only worked for fun and to kill boredom.

Few of my competitors succeeded because they were too convinced about their
certain success. They just couldn’t understand that the market could say no to such
a breakthrough product.

They were also using a shotgun approach in their marketing trying to sell to
everybody. Therefore their marketing was very ineffective.
If you don’t truly understand who is your prime target you wont be able to find them
and communicate effectively to them.

So my point is that everyone want something different and you will never find a
product everybody wants. For example most people think a Ferrari is a cool car,
but I personally wouldn’t want to drive one even if you paid me for it.

Second: When people say “everyone will want to buy this” Its’ practically certain
that they will take the eye off important areas like marketing, how to lead people,
logistics etc. etc . which are all important parts of running a successful business.

You should definitely believe and be passionate about your product, but your alarm
bells should go off if you go mad with excitement. Especially if this is your first
business you are starting or considering.

Take a step back try to look at it with the eyes of someone not involved.
As the famous business strategist Jay Abraham say: “Have an out-of-body
experience” Look at your business or project from the outside and ask yourself
“what’s wrong with this picture”.

Every business has weaknesses and strengths and only by knowing the
weaknesses you can be truly strong.

Also do some marketing test online of your concept. You can do this for peanuts
today.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the most dangerous entrepreneurial mistakes.

Have a profitable and fun day – Patrick M. Powers