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Positioning Your Business
for Succëss
© 2004 By Charlie
Cook
As the plane lifts off, imagine yourself reclining
comfortably in your first class seat. You're
headed for San
Francisco where you'll be met by a driver and
whisked to a
luxury hotel with views of the bay. The tab is
being picked
up by a company looking to buy your firm, and
your biggest
concern is how much cash and stock to ask for
when you meet
with the president of the company and the senior
officers.
Sound like a fantasy?
Actually, I was the person being whisked across
country, a
few years back, to negotiate the sale of a web
site I had
built. With a lot of hard work and a carefully
executed
positioning I created the opp0rtunity to make
more than I
thought possible from what had started as a just
for fun
project.
Whether you are a builder, accountant, realtor,
market
researcher, or manufacture loudspeakers or
baseball bats,
the way you position your firm can determine
your succëss.
- Do you want prospects to seek you out?
- Do you want people to pay you more?
- Do you want to stand head and shoulders above
your
competition?
With a simple positioning strategy you can get
more
attention than you imagined and bring in those
high-margin
projects and the profits you want. Here's how I
positioned
one of my ideas for succëss.
Click Here to Start.
1. IDENTIFY A NEED
In 1999, a new search engine was appearing on the Internet
almost every week. Some were much better than others.
Knowing which search tool to use was confusing. Through my
own interest in finding better tools to navigate the web,
I'd discovered a common need.
2. EDUCATE PROSPECTS TO DEMONSTRATE YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Based on four years of study of search engines and a book
I'd written previously on marketing to the search engines,
I'd become an expert on how they did and didn't work. To
help my own online research and to help others, I built a
web site that provided a directory of search engines and
reviewed their usefulness and functionality.
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- What are your areas of
expertise?
The objective of my site was simple. At a time when most
people were just discovering the web, I wanted to help
them
find the best possible search tools for their particular
task. My mission was to educate people about how to find
what they were looking for online. The site primarily
focused on the growing number of reviews I authored.
Instead
of leading with information about my credentials, I used
the
content on the site to demonstrate my knowledge.
- What can you do to educate your prospects?
- How can you demonstrate your expertise?
3. IDENTIFY AND REACH YOUR TARGET MARKET
Now I needed a way to get people to the site. While my
target market was almost infinite - anyone searching the
Internet - my advertising budget was zero. (Remember I
was doing this as a back pocket project while
maintaining
my marketing consulting practice.) How could I attract
attention and get people to come back to the web site
again and again?
I identified online editors and reference librarians as
identifiable, approachable groups with a high level of
interest and influence. I started an ezine directing
readers
to current search engine reviews and updates on the site
and
published approximately once a month.
- What is your stay-in-touch strategy?
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RESULTS
After just three issues of my ezine reporters
started
calling me for radio interviews and magazine
articles.
I received an offër to buy the web site with the
price
tied to the number of monthly visitors and page
views.
Three months later I had grown traffic to the
site from
thirty thousand to three hundred thousand page
views per
month and closed the deal.
POSITIONING YOUR COMPANY
To position your product or service for succëss:
A. Identify a Common Need
B. Identify a Market
C. Demonstrate Your Expertise to that Market
D. Continue to Stay in Touch
If you've been in business for three years or
more you've
accumulated a wealth of experience and
knowledge. The more
you share your ideas, the more people will view
you as an
expert and seek you out. Give your prospects
examples of
your expertise and they will think of you when
they need
your products or services.
You can use an ezine, your web site, a book,
workshops or
public speaking to demonstrate your knowledge
and put your
firm ahead of the competition. Using the
strategy outlined
above and a little effort you can position your
business for
succëss and put yourself in front.
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2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights
reserved.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The author, Charlie Cook, helps service
professionals and
small business owners attract more clients and
be more
successful. Sign up for the Frëë Marketing Plan
eBook,
'7 Steps to get more clients and grow your
business'
at
http://www.marketingforsuccess.com
full of practical
marketing tips. |
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