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Month: December 2011

Band-Aid Marketing

When it comes to small business marketing you might be surprised how many business owners implement what I refer to as ‘band-aid marketing’ and yet they wonder why sales are lack luster and traffic is ho-hum.

This all goes back to the ole’ strengths and weaknesses talk. Check out my previous articles on this subject if you are curious.

So it comes down to this…

Most small business owners I’ve encountered over the years are not strong marketers.

At best they are mediocre to average, with most below average. They might be great at selling and maybe one other area of their business but marketing is the weak point that constantly rears its head.

I have found that their lack of understanding in this critical area tends to be a sore subject or one that you just don’t bring up, unless you want an argument to follow.

Note: If you are the rare individual who is good to great at marketing, this article is obviously not about you, so bear with me.

So as I dig into this topic today, here’s a story from yesteryear:

I once had a string of clients who were all what I call Band-Aid Marketers.

It was a time when I was working in a very narrow niche and each one of these small business owners needed help generating business.

One understood that to reach his audience he had to advertise in the right mediums and with the right messages. So he did and his results were solid.

Two other owners were sales guys who could talk a good talk, but had not a clue how to market or merchandise.

These two were covered with band-aids and didn’t even know it! All they wanted to do was sell and sell they did.

So both owners allowed us to produce jingles and radio commercials for a short run on local radio stations. This was their way of testing us to see if we could pull off what we proposed.

The ads pulled and generated sales, but after the short run was completed, they decided to go it alone, without our help. After all, they had the jingle and radio package to work with, along with our strategy and ideas, right?

They figured they could do it better and cheaper!

When it came to marketing they weren’t going to admit their lack of understanding.

So they put on one more band-aid, trudged forward, struggled, and one owner even went out of business.

The other owner still doesn’t have a website that I could find and it’s been almost ten years!

Band-aid marketing. Get the picture? I sure hope so.

When it comes down to it, you either like marketing or you don’t.

If marketing isn’t your thing, then hire it out to seasoned professionals and let them do what they do best. You work in your strengths and areas you enjoy.

If your strength area is marketing, then study, research and grow, so you can improve upon what is working.

If you are a solo-preneur and need to do it all…make it a goal to outsource and hire qualified people to do the tasks and work that you least enjoy.

This way you can be more productive, happier and have a business that is headed in the right direction.

Band-aid marketing will cost you time, money and probably quite a few headaches. Take it from me, it’s not worth it and you’ll end up with a whole lot of cuts and bruises that you could have avoided in the first place.

BTW- if you want to learn how we rocked the search engines for 6 years straight, stumped the competition and kept our vendors guessing, check out secretsofthetinystore.com .

Dave Krygier
Publisher