When I released my first book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, I hoped that it would be met with immediate success. Instead, nobody bought the book on its initial release day. Like most would be in this situation, I felt defeated. I had to think about my next step. Should I learn how to market effectively or simply give up on my hopes and dreams?
I knew that I wrote a good book and that it would help other entrepreneurs succeed, so it became my mission to properly market the book. The lack of good and effective marketing is what holds many businesses back from reaching their goals.
If you want to beat the competition, you must differentiate yourself from the rest. My book Get Different explains ways that you can make your company more visible in the business marketplace. I’d love to share the three main steps from this book, as they can help any business’s marketing strategy be more engaging and effective.
- The first thing you need to do is differentiate your business from its competitors. If you rely on word-of-mouth marketing, you’ll fail. Instead, you should get out there and use your marketing tools to ensure that people know your business is the best in the industry. Use your talents to stand out from the crowd. Be funnier or smarter than the rest, and consumers will surely take notice of your brand.
- After you get your consumers’ attention, you need to attract and engage them. Give your campaign an authoritative, trustful, repetitive or socially significant approach so they feel comfortable using your business.
- Lastly, you need to be direct. After you get their attention, tell them what to do. Develop a call to action so customers and ideal prospects will take the next step. By picking a specific action, you can also measure the results and see how effective your marketing truly is.
Proper marketing can be very difficult to achieve, but with these steps, you will be on the road to business success.
Mike Michalowicz has always believed that he had the formula to success and has proven it on multiple occasions. He is the creator of the book Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive greater profits. Mike is a former small-business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and served as a business makeover specialist for MSNBC. Mike currently leads two new multimillion-dollar ventures as he puts his latest research to the test.