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Once a business is established, it's common practice to add products and services in the name of diversification and the desire for more profits. It's a wise business move to choose products and services that will appeal to customers you're already doing business with.
But what's the point of diminishing returns? When does adding more products become less profitable or even start losing you money?
Lego is known for its beloved interlocking toy bricks. The company has been around since 1949. You and your children have probably built many fun projects using their colorful, iconic blocks.
As with many other successful brands, Lego decided to diversify. The Denmark-based company added games, movies, clothing lines, and six themed amusement parks (Legoland). Lego added many new colors to the primary colored bricks originally available. Costs were added at a much higher rate than new profits to pay for all this diversification.
The once very profitable company began bleeding red ink. A new CEO (Jorgen Vig Knudstrorp) was brought in to fix the problem. One of the first questions he asked was this: "What do we need to stop doing?"
Beginning in 2005, Lego sold the theme parks and whittled down half of the brick colors. They became more efficient and creative at doing what they were good at by concentrating on less rather than more. By the end of the same year, Lego was profitable again.
Sometimes the answer to doing more is to actually do less. Doing less frees up time and resources to concentrate on the key products and customers that bring you the bulk of your profits. If you have too many services or products, start considering what things you should stop doing, so you can focus instead on what really matters.
Every marketing piece should have a call to action that helps direct the reader to the next step. Whether you want them to click a link, download a file, or contact your business, here are a few tips to ensure your call to action gets noticed and utilized:
We'd love to help you create marketing materials that get noticed and increase sales. Check us out online for more creative ideas or to request a printing quote today!
You know the game.
You start with a deck of playing cards and slowly begin to stack them together, carefully leaning one card against another at just the right angle, until you've created a solid wall of cards. You build the house higher and higher, one card and one row at a time, all the while moving around carefully so the whole thing doesn't come crashing down.
Building and growing a business can sometimes feel like building a house of cards. If you have one or two clients providing the bulk of your revenue, your business can begin to feel as precariously unstable as that playing card wall.
Wal-mart is a giant corporation. Stories abound of how they've made and also broken some of their vendors. But you don't have to be a Wal-mart vendor to find your company in this tricky situation. No matter how safe you think your relationship with a large account might be, life tends to throw you curveballs. There are no guarantees. If that one large account leaves for any reason and you face ruin, then you have built a house of cards.
After the initial start-up phase is over, running a successful business becomes a matter of managing risks. Having a few clients account for the bulk of revenue can happen slowly over time, or it can come about in a flash. The role of the owner and directors is to recognize the inherent risks, then go about managing them.
The obvious solution is to find more clients in order to broaden the customer base. The trick is to do this while managing larger customer expectations and not failing in product and service delivery.
No one said being a company owner is an easy thing to do.
In financial circles, astute financial planners recommend owning a predefined percentage mix of stock and bond funds based on your age and risk tolerance. As you add more funds, the percentages can get out of balance in one part of the portfolio. A periodic review shows which part is out of balance. The solution is to sell the overloaded part and buy more of the other in order to bring the portfolio back into balance.
Owning and running a business correctly is similar to having a financial portfolio. You must understand and realize what your goals are at the beginning and review them regularly. Successful owners realize when one metric has gone out of balance and take immediate action to bring it back in line.
A business built like a house of cards will have no choice but to crash back down to earth no matter how high the stack has grown. Broadening your customer base while providing excellent customer service and product delivery will ensure that no wind of change will affect your business.
When you do that, you will have the added bonus of sleeping much easier at night.
Content marketing has become one of the buzzwords in the business marketing world. Many claim this is a new way to market. That is not correct. Providing valuable content to lure prospects and visitors has been around for a while. The distribution channels for this content may have expanded recently, but the strategy has been around for many years.
One case in point involves a tiny electronics firm in Seattle. The company opened in 1954 as Magnolia Stationers and Camera Shop in the Magnolia Village shopping district of Seattle. The owner, Len Tweten, loved music, which eventually led him to move the business into the world of high-fidelity audio. This transition over time also prompted a business name change to Magnolia Hi-Fi.
High-quality products and commitment to service were just a part of the overall plan to grow the business. Being a small business with no real marketing plan or budget, Magnolia Hi-Fi decided the best way to differentiate itself was to educate prospects with valuable information about the Hi-Fi world. To do this, the company introduced stereo buyer's guides (over 30 years ago), which provided educational content and answers to commonly asked questions on buying audio equipment.
The buyer's guides set Magnolia Hi-Fi apart from the competition. They also positioned the company as leaders and experts in their field in the eyes of their audience.
Did this content marketing plan work?
The tiny store grew into a small chain, which was acquired by Best Buy in December of 2000... for $87 million! In 2004, the Magnolia brand was incorporated into Best Buy as a store-within-a-store, known as Magnolia Home Theatre.
Content marketing works. It works best when you use multiple channels to distribute and share your content (print and digital work in perfect tandem for this strategy). Creating valuable content your prospects are looking for takes some work and resources. But don't overlook the rewards that can come from that work. It may not net you $87 million, but it can prove to be nearly as valuable.
You can read more of the details behind this remarkable story here.
Marketing is about telling your story. Sales is about having conversations.
From the point of view of marketing, every single business is unique. No two are exactly alike. The mistake occurs when everyone in the industry looks at what others are doing and copies it. The story is no longer unique.
To sell more and to make the job of sales easier, you need to position your marketing message in a unique way that resonates with and attracts the types of customers you're looking for.
When you do this right, you will end up having conversations. Conversations that will ultimately lead to sales.
If you don't tell your story, you can be sure that your competitors will tell the story for you. And that is not the story you want prospects to hear.
Stories and the Caveman From the beginning of time, when early human beings drew paintings on cave walls, people have been telling stories. Stories are in our DNA. Stories connect one generation to the next. The human brain has a special soft spot for stories.
That's why the most successful brands have a story wrapped up in everything they do. We're bombarded with marketing messages every day. Why do we remember some brand messages and not others? Because those brands have planted a seed in our brains with their unique and interesting story.
No one forgets Coke and their story of a top secret recipe kept in a vault. Apple, Starbucks, and Virgin are among other brands that tell their story very well.
Why Do We Do It? Your story should be not just about what you do or even how you do it. The story really should be about why you do it. That part of the story is what connects people with you and your business.
That's what becomes the story of your brand and business.
How Do We Do It? This doesn't have to be difficult to do. All you need is a pad of paper, a pen, and a quiet space to think. All you have to do is answer the question: "Why are we doing what we do?"
That's a big, hairy topic, I know. But you have to tackle it and get it down on paper. If you can manage to answer it in an authentic way that captures the imagination of your prospects, you'll make your marketing messages focused and much more effective. People may not remember you or your logo very well, but they will always remember your story.
In turn, that makes the job of sales much easier. It opens the door to conversations. Those conversations will lead to real sales. Your story will make it easier to reach prospects looking for what you do. A unique marketing story told in an authentic way will make the job of selling much easier. That's what successful marketing is all about.
The two go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Even though Facebook has more than one billion active monthly users, many businesses still aren't using it to its full potential. Here are a few easy ways to use Facebook to increase exposure, communicate with customers, and grow your business:
Like most types of marketing, Facebook requires dedication. While immediate results are unlikely, a well-nurtured Facebook account can help many organizations strengthen relationships and grow their business.
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