Small Business Marketing, According to Seinfeld

Written by Will Dylan


What could Seinfeld possibly have to do with marketing a small business? As it turns out, all small business owners could take a few lessons fromrepparttar show that brought us such popular phrases as “Man Hands” and “master of your domain”.

The Coffee Shop – Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine spent countless hours inrepparttar 121255 coffee shop, talking about “nothing.” You should spend some time there as well, but instead of talking about your parents or your date last night, get together with other small business owners and talk about your respective business and marketing activities. Many of you already participate in local business clubs and organizations, butrepparttar 121256 feedback and shared ideas that are generated in an informal business chat over a coffee are oftenrepparttar 121257 most valuable. My “coffee shop group” consists of 3 small businesses owners from different industries. Between us, we generate great marketing ideas for each other or in my case, new topics for small business articles. You can easily gather a few small business owners together for this type of meeting. Just be sure they are not competitors!

The Short-Term Relationship – It seemed that every Thursday, Jerry was dating a different woman. In fact, outside of Elaine he rarely dated a woman for any length of time. Jerry understood that sometimes, you don’t want to be tied down to a long-term relationship. The same rule applies to your small business marketing activities. Too many small businesses get drawn in to long-term advertising relationships by committing to a certain amount of advertising in exchange for a discount. Those who sell advertising try to convince business owners that you can’t evaluate a particular form of advertising based on just a small sampling period, and thus a longer contract is required. This is simply not true. Inrepparttar 121258 small business world, ads must at least pay for themselves before you agree to investigate any long-term advertising commitment. You’re not buildingrepparttar 121259 next mega conglomerate (not yet, anyway), so ad money that doesn’t produce a positive ROI is wasted money. Jerry understood that ifrepparttar 121260 early part ofrepparttar 121261 relationship wasn’t perfect,repparttar 121262 rest was bound to go downhill. Apply that rule to your marketing and advertising purchases and you’ll maximizerepparttar 121263 effectiveness of your advertising. If it works on a sample basis, consider a long term plan. If it doesn’t work inrepparttar 121264 short term, give themrepparttar 121265 “it’s not you, it’s me” routine and move on.

Define Yourself to Find Market Share

Written by Bill Platt


Sometimes, findingrepparttar right product or service to make your own is to find someone else's version ofrepparttar 121254 same product or service and discovering ways to deliver it in a different way.

Someone once told me that I could not make it in a business because there were already people in that particular business!

The thought struck me as stupid. That is why we have other restaurants right. It was not enough to put a McDonalds in town, we also had to build a Burger King, Wendy's, Carl's Junior, Braums, Sonic and several more all ofrepparttar 121255 local variety. All of them offer us hamburgers, so why do we need more than one of them?

Because diversity sells. They all make hamburgers, but each one deliversrepparttar 121256 hamburger to us in a slightly different fashion. Every single one of them are successful and have been for years.

Justrepparttar 121257 other night, I read a story onrepparttar 121258 history of Root Beer. They stated that inrepparttar 121259 127+ years of history surroundingrepparttar 121260 beverage, that there have been 8000 documented variations ofrepparttar 121261 same product. They believe that there may have been 100,000 variations ofrepparttar 121262 same product, though they could not verifyrepparttar 121263 larger majority of them.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use