But these businesses don’t go out of business because of bad service or poor quality products.  These businesses are usually run by people who are passionate about what they do and genuinely care about their customers.

So why is it that so many small businesses come and go?

Is it because they had a bad business idea?

Sometimes, yes but more often the real reason is that they have no idea on how marketing works and what are the easiest and simplest ways of attracting customers.

Let me give you an example.

Jane is an ex-accountant who got fed up with the commute in to work every day and because of her passion for colours and interiors, she decided to re-train and start up an interiors business.  She now offers a range of services from one-off consultations and personal home styling to project managing big decorating jobs.

Jane is based in a fairly affluent area.  The current housing market has meant that more people are extending and modifying their property to get more space rather than move.  There is a potential market place for Jane’s service, especially when Jane has worked out that she only needs to be working with a maximum of 10 clients at any given time.

She has sensibly got a 6 month financial buffer, but four months in and Jane is finding it difficult attracting enough clients to her business.  She rarely has more than the odd appointment in her diary each week.

She advertises once a month in her local newspaper because she felt she ought to have a presence and get her name out there.  And she has also just signed up for one year advertising in her parish magazine as well with a local online business directory.  She has even gone round and put a leaflet in every door in her local neighbourhood offering a free consultation, but not one person has called her about the offer.

Selling her business is becoming hard work.  It is demoralising and the passion is starting to dwindle.  If it carries on like this, Jane will be forced to give up on her dreams and return to her accountancy career to pay the bills.

It’s not fair is it?  Especially when Jane is offering a quality and professional service which is backed up by study and training.  There is a local market for what she offers and she knows that her knowledge can help increase the value of people’s homes and save them endless of hours of research.

But what she doesn’t know is how to market herself.  All her money is going in to advertising that obviously is not working for her and on leaflets that are obviously aren’t compelling enough to make people call.

Jane needs to stop and take the time out to really get to know her target customers.

Targeting the right customers with the right messages is really the secret to great marketing.  The better you know the people you want to attract, the more likely it is that you will know where to find them, how to communicate with them and how to make yourself attractive enough for these people to call you.

Jane needs to stop her advertising and go back to basics.

Who are her target customers?  What are their worries and concerns?  When it comes to home decorating and creating more space, what are their real problems and challenges?  How much are they willing to spend for to solved these problems?

By focusing on some simple questions such as these, Jane’s answers will help her work out what her special uniqueness could be to make her marketing activities and offers compelling and attractive.

So, for those of you out there who feeling like Jane, take a long hard look at how you are telling people about your business.  If your advertising isn’t working, cancel it.  If those leaflets cluttering up your office aren’t working, get rid of them.

Cleanse your business of stuff that you are doing because you think it is the right thing to do.  Stop second guessing and start understanding your customers.

I am re-reading Michael Gerber’s “E-Myth Revisited” again - something I recommend everyone who runs their own business to do at least once every 18 months - and I have just read the chapter where he introduces the Entrepreneurial Model.

He writes: “The Entrepreneurial Model looks at a business as if it were a product, sitting on a shelf and competing for the customer’s attention against a whole shelf of competing products (or businesses).”

What he means by this is that it isn’t your actual product or service that is critical to your business success, but the way that you offer it to your market.  If we go back to my question “If you were a washing powder, which would you be and why?”, you soon realise that the only difference between all the washing powders out there are the way that they are marketed.

They all wash clothes, but to compete on a shelf at Tesco or Waitrose, a washing powder has to stand out from all the rest.  Tough, when you think about the brand loyalties that most consumers have, often passed on from their parents.

So stop focusing on your product’s/service’s features and start thinking in terms of the benefit you offer and how you get this message across to your customers.

A marketing plan is really quite a simple document to produce.

There are far too many complicated templates that can be downloaded from the internet or got from a business book.  And when you feel you may have to produce a 20 page document, it can be the fastest way to put off the whole planning process.

There are only 3 questions that you need to answer in your marketing plan and they are:

1.  Where are you now?

2.  where are you going?

3.  How are you going to get there?

And they need to be in this order.

Too many business owners jump in to the “how are you going get there” question and get bogged down with marketing strategies and tools that, frankly, may not help you bit.

Start with the easiest question of all “where are you now?”. Not only will this help build your confidence up (after all, you should know the answer to this question without much thinking!), it will give you a baseline from where to start building.

The second question “where are you going?” is designed to focus you on targets and goals.  Where do you want to be this time next year?  How many clients do you want to managing?  How many hours do you want to be working? How much money do you want to be creating?

Your destination needs to specific.  It needs to be something that you can measure.  It’s got to have a timescales.  And it’s got to be realistic and something that you know is achievable. (Yup, you’ve guessed it - it has to a SMART goal!).

Once you have your SMART desination, you will find it far easier to answer the third and final question “How are you going to get there?”.

So forget about mission statements and synopsises.  Get to the basics and focus on what’s going to work for you on a day-to-day basis.

John & Edward, the 18 year old twins who have made it in to the final 12 of the X Factor, are taking the country by storm and have defied everyone by getting enough votes to stay in the competition.

But if it is apparent to everyone that they can’t sing, why is it that they got in to the top 12 in the first place - never mind winning votes to stay in?

It’s because John & Edward have the buzz!

It was a shrewd marketing move from the X Factor team to have them in the top 12.  They will have known that the media would be writing about them, DJs would be moaning about them, chat show hosts would be tearing them in to little strips.

They knew that the whole country would end up having a view point about them - which would get the X Factor being noticed.

Just check out the trending topics on Twitter when X Factor is on and you’ll see for yourself how much buzz is created from the show.

As business owners it is easy to focus on being the “best” coach, the most “proficient” trainer or produce the “highest quality” photographs.  But is being the “best” really going to get you noticed?

Now, I’m not for one moment suggesting you turn out below standard work or try to short-change your clients!  Just because John & Edward can’t sing, they can sure deliver the entertainment value that the audiences of XFactor want.

So, give yourself a break. As long as you are delivering to your clients’ expectations, stop trying to being the “best” and focus on getting talked about.

What do you think? Leave a comment :o)

Thought you may like to read an email I received last week from one of my newsletter subscribers.  I think what Jean has shared here, demonstrates how important it is to showcase yourself as an expert in your field and have tools that help build potential clients’ trust in you - before actually speaking or meeting you.

Here’s what Jean Davies from Whiskers Pet Care had to say:

“Blogging works really well for me.  I’ve picked up some new customers recently who’ve found their way to my blog and been reading it - and they’ve said that it’s because of what they read in my blog.

They’ve got to know more about me than just my website provides, and I find it gives a real insight into my personality, values, etc, and in my business, where I’m working with people and their animals that’s so important. 

I only post something when I’m in the mood as it’s important it comes across with the right energy and impact, but so far I’ve not struggled to find something to say!! 

This is my blog if you would like to check it out:  www.whiskerspetcare.blogspot.com.”

If you have a success story to tell about your blog or any other marketing tool, email me or leave a comment below.  It would be great to share your stories, too.

Coaches, trainers and other personal development experts are very good at spending their money on learning new skills and techniques.  Nutritional therapists, complementary therapists and hypnotherapists too.  And NLP courses are a perfect example of how many consultants spend their money.

But why do you spend your money on these training courses?  Is it because that by having another skill or technique (or even initials to put after your name on your business card) means that you will be able to attract more clients and customers to your business?

Well, I hate to break it to you, but investing in hundreds (and sometimes thousands!) of pounds on learning new skills and techniques will NOT cause the client flood gates to suddenly open.

If you want to learn a new skill because you are geniuenly interested in it, then go for it by all means.

But if you want to learn a new skill so that you can attract new clients, then stop before you hand over your credit card.

Offering new skills and techniques may just cause confusion as you end up with a huge menu of services, trying to be everything to everyone.  Investing in your marketing strategies, techniques and systems could  just have a far higher return on your investment.

So, next time you find yourself looking at a new training programme, just make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.  You may find that investing that money in to market research, understanding your customer better and developing more effective and efficient marketing systems will go a lot further!

However, one hour later we had not only time planned the copy writing but also spent the best part of the session focusing on who exactly she wanted to attract to her website.

Her target audience of “women” was just too broad and she soon realised that to enable her to write powerful and engaging copy that stopped online surfers in their tracks and got them to leave their name and email address to opt-in to her newsletter, she needed to be absolutely clear on who it was she wanted to engage with.Whether it is the home page of your website, a flyer for your next event or a postcard to handout at networking events, you have to spend time writing out the profile of the person you want to be attracting before you write the copy.

It will save you months of wasted marketing!

When you aren’t answering the phone or replying to emails, you are speaking to clients, going to meetings and doing the work that you are being paid to do.  All that rushing around and no time to think!

But as a small business owner, it is critical to make the time for mental space.  And I am not just talking about spending valuable time on planning.

I am talking about time spent gazing out of the window watching the sun shine through the trees.  I am talking about the time spent walking around your neighbour without listening to the latest podcast or business audio download.

It’s amazing how much clearer your business becomes and what the next stage of your action plan needs to be when you spend time leaning back in your chair – just gazing!

How do you create mental space for your business?  Leave your thoughts as a comment below.

Now, of course it’s important to check out your competition.  It can be a useful yard-stick to help you understand price ranges, services to offer and products that sell well.

BUT when that internet searching becomes endless hours of finding more and more websites, all seemingly to be offering a bigger and better service/product that you could even dream about – then STOP!

Worrying about your competition at such an early stage can be damaging to your confidence levels.  In today’s market place it is highly unlikely to “discover” a niche.  You should be more worried that no one is doing what you want to be doing because it generally means there is no demand – but that’s a lesson for another blog posting!

One of the most simplest, yet most effective, ways of increasing the number of referrals from existing clients is to stop asking:

“Do you know of anyone who may be interested in what I offer?”

and start asking:

“Who do you know who may be interested in what I offer?”

The simple change of emphasis on the word “who” opens the person’s mind up and they start searching for an answer.  “Do you know” is a classic closed question which only gives you two answers:  yes or no.

“Who do you” is an open question which allows the person to think about an answer.

And if they can’t think of anyone at the time, there is a greater chance of them thinking of a name at a later date.