Hi! It’s Raji here again writing yet another blog for you all. What did you think of my last blog on why you don’t need branding and website development from a branding perspective? I hope you gained some perspective. I like to make it clear that I am not here to say what is right or wrong and anyone who tells you how to run your business without knowing your business is just trying to make profit, if you’re chasing profit it’s going to be a long bumpy ride. I am here to purely provide perspective, my perspective. Our perspective is based on our experiences in business in the market we choose to dive into, and also our life experiences made up of interactions, engagements, education and probably more.
The first struggle I am going to talk about is what I mentioned above, chasing profit, the priority for your business Im assuming is to grow, you need revenue to invest back into the business, and the way to make revenue is sales and the way to make sales is by offering a product or services to people who need and want them. The way to make sales is by not to focus on sales. Sounds crazy right? When I started my business, coming from a sales background and doing well I assumed the best way was to focus on selling to people and therefore I wasn’t focusing on providing a service to the people who need it. How can you do this when you are not an expert in your field, but more importantly when you are an expert, people don’t know you’re an expert in your field. Get good at understanding your product or service and market rather than focusing on selling to everyone and anyone. An example of this is reducing your prices, we rarely reduce prices because we think it’s great for our business, we do it because we think we’ll make more sales. Stop chasing the sale, understand the market this is how you will build revenue.
Let’s break down how to understand the market, there are many ways to do this and people are talking about it all the time, I will keep it simple, understand your product, speak to people and figure out what the problems are and how you are solving them. This process takes time but in that process you will make sales anyway, those sales will teach you about your market but the sales you don’t make will teach you even more,like who your target market actually is vs who you think it is, which in my opinion is even more valuable. The broader you begin the harder the job is going to be, the harder the job is the more resilience you need, which is why so many people give up. Is everyone really your market? Water is drunk by millions of people yet every water brand has its own market of people. The power of branding, you can let the market choose you or you can choose your market, or at least begin to try.
Whether you think it or not, whether your product or service is unique or not, you already have a brand. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a new innovation or a take away shop, you already have a brand. Now I am meeting business owners face to face again (obviously with covid measures) and what surprises me when I meet awesome people, is that their brand does not represent them. Each person is unique, each business is unique, so shouldn’t your brand represent this? People buy from brands, because they trust them.
Remember before they try your product or service they need to trust you, how do you trust someone you don’t know? How do you trust a business you don’t know? Simple answer to that is you don’t, but you can begin to try, by diving deep into your business, understanding your market and relating to them, through your look and feel to begin with and then with each and every interaction with your brand. Simple steps, start with basic branding, make sales, build revenue and then reinvest into every aspect of your business because there is no hiding in today’s world. The world is becoming more connected and more online savvy, are you moving with it? Work smarter, start by building your brand.
In reality we are trying to do so much when we start a business, how on earth do you prioritise in a world where posting on your social media is just as important as handling invoices. Find the answer to this and more in startup struggles and simple solutions part 2.
In the meantime if you’re in the midlands and run a small business come and join our community, on this link.
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Wish you lots of success till we talk again.
