One of the first things we focus on in my Business Coaching sessions is the Vision for your business. This may seem a bit airy-fairy for a no-nonsense business coach, as I will ask you to imagine what people will say about you after you are gone (!) and to create a vision of your life in 2, 3, 5 and 10 year’s time, but it is an absolutely ESSENTIAL part of building a successful business.
If you do not know your destination how on earth can we plan how you will get there and if you don’t know where you are going then how will you know when you get there?
One of the great parts of this process is that it begins with defining what is REALLY important to you and that forms the basis of what makes your business unique.
To delve into this subject more deeply I have invited my ‘marketing guru’ Louise Seager from the Inspiration Agency to share her expertise with us this month.
Louise Seager – Inspiration Agency
There are lots of pieces to the puzzle when it comes to business success. As Duncan says defining your Vision is essential to creating a successful business. Marketing is also essential, but not just any old marketing…marketing that works, that generates enquiries from your ideal customers without breaking the bank!
The fact is anyone can set up a Pay-Per-Click campaign in Google or Advertising campaign in Facebook and if you spend enough money you WILL get enquiries, but that won’t necessarily mean a profitable business!
So, all marketing efforts have to meet a budget…even giant corporate entities have a budget for marketing…they know what they can afford to spend to make a sale.
The best way to get a great return-on-investment for your marketing spend is to be specific. Specific in what your business does, the results you deliver and the clients you target.
It may feel that be being specific you are ruling out products you could sell, services you could offer or people you could market to, but even Mark Zuckerberg started off getting his University Peers to use his Face Book – World domination came later.
So now we come to identifying what makes your business unique. When we are writing a marketing strategy, creating a brand, building a website or planning a social media campaign for a client we do not ask directly about Unique Selling Points (USPs). This only results in a generic list of qualities that could probably apply to any business; friendly, professional, reliable etc. This is pretty useless – after all no one wants to buy from a business that is rude and unreliable and they certainly won’t buy more than once if you are.
We get to what makes a business unique and who their specific target audience should be through listening to their story. This is very similar to Duncan’s Vision exercise. We ask about their experience, why they chose to start their own business, discuss their journey, review their best clients, go into customer relationships that have not been ideal…during the course of this conversation the things that are important in the business come out and we can also start to identify their IDEAL customer – not just age, sex, geography, but also details of mindset and attitude.
So here are my top 10 things to consider when identifying what makes your business truly unique
- What is your experience, previous jobs, education, life, family, friends
- What qualities are important to YOU personally and how do you incorporate those into your business
- What do you NOT LIKE about businesses you have worked in or even your competitors
- What GREAT THINGS do your clients say about you in reviews or testimonials
- Who are your FAVOURITE clients to work with
- What is your FAVOURITE type of work to do or product to sell
- What products, services or clients make you the MOST MONEY
- Who are your WORST clients
- What is the WORST kind of work to do or product to sell
- What makes you the LEAST MONEY
Once you have the answers to these questions you will start to see your business’ Uniqueness coming together. You can then use this information to create your Client Avatar, develop a marketing strategy and use it to brief everyone from your Branding Designer to your Website Designer and get the BEST return on investment for your marketing spend.
Back to Duncan…
I found that really helpful, it is an exercise Louise and I have done for my business and I have certainly seen the benefits.
My business coaching covers a lot of areas. I am a Coach not a Consultant, so I am going to share knowledge with you, encourage and sometimes push you, but ultimately I am NOT going to do things for you. There will be stages during your business journey when you need to utilise experts – either employed or consultants to ensure you get the best advice and use your time wisely – at the things you are really good at. This might be a bookkeeper, accountant, HR consultant or marketing consultant and this is a great example of bringing in an expert. I hope to be able to bring you more Guest Blogs from other experts in the coming months.
In the meantime if you would like to start defining your Vision and Uniqueness book a Discovery Call with me to see how I could help
