Greetings
Welcome to my Blog and its first post. I hope you will visit often and find a lot of information that will help your business.
After 30 years in business and an additional 26 years teaching business at the college level, I do believe I've been "Around the block a few times."
I believe every Business instructor should work in private business before stepping in front of a classroom with a textbook under their arm. Don't misunderstand me, textbooks are an absolutely necessity to teaching business. However, they don't guide you when a customer calls on a Friday night and says his system he bought from you last year "went out to lunch," (i.e., crashed). Or, a delivery to a customer gets lost.
Sometimes the full-page advertisement for a local grocery store hits the streets loaded with errors. Or how about when a competitor appears overnight and undercuts your prices drastically and you lose customers?
These and a list of hundreds of solutions to these problems are not fully addressed in a textbook. I have found that the combination of working as a business owner and teaching college level business classes provided me with both the academic and the real world of business and with that experience I hope to help small businesses that are fighting these battles everyday.
I am new to Blogging and hope to get your "Comments/Questions" etc. I welcome suggested topics you would like me to address....hopefully I can help. My email address is:
smallbusinfo.vpt@gmail.com
smallbusinfo.vpt@gmail.com
I look forward to reading and learning from your blog!
ReplyDeleteSuggestion future topic:
How to establish an unique "brand" for a commercial product or service on a small business level.
To; FellSyd,
DeleteGood question....and a difficult one for small businesses. But, there is a way. But, (again), you first have to do something that very few businesses do, even though it is very easy.
There are several ways to approach this and they all require you to get "Inside the Customer's Mind."
First I'll say something that every Marketing expert knows, and that is this: "PEOPLE DON"T BUY PRODUCTS....THEY BUY WHAT THEY GET OUT OF THE PRODUCT" Also, (this is important), A product has two things, the first is what we call "Features." These features are, for example, what it is made of, color, size, waterproof, battery operated, styling, weight, etc., etc., In other words they are what the manufacturer PUTS INTO THE PRODUCT. O.K.? Got it?
Now the second thing a product has are what those marketing experts call BENEFITS....It's what the customer is REALLY buying. It's what the customer is getting from the product. For example, woman goes to a cosmetics store is she buying colored powders, eye lash stuff, grease to paint her lips, liquids that smell nice, etc.,? The answer is NO. She is buying the benefits of those cosmetics TO MAKE HER MORE ATTRACTIVE. She is buying what she will get out of those products.
Hang in there....I'll get to your answer.
The main point of all this is this: Before you approach any Marketing effort, and Branding is a big part of marketing, you must first understand your customer by understanding what they are getting in the form of benefits from your product.
Think about this for awhile and when you are clear about it then it will not only help in thinking about branding but most important your Marketing. Actually the "Benefits' must be central to all your Marketing. If not then your wasting your money.
O.K., once you get a good idea about the Benefits then we'll get to branding....Yes, the benefits will direct you to a branding style.
Good Luck...keep in touch.
Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. Recommended Site
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