Pub. Note: Last week’s article on social vs. traditional media by Patti Hill drew this response from ad-biz veteran Bill Hoke, who has specialized in recent years on small-business startups.
By Bill Hoke
How does today’s entrepreneur start, grow and sustain a small business when the traditional media are all but dead?
Two months ago, 34 would-be business owners agreed to take an eight-week course to develop their business idea and prove whether it was go or no-go by completing a fill-in-the-blanks business-feasibility study.
This gives them a business showcase to test their ideas, product, services and concepts in front of real- life business owners.
Then, I was invited to talk with them about their role as the sales manager in their company. For some, the shock of being charged with sales was palpable. Me? Be a salesperson? Me?
Every business needs customers, and—of all the advertising tools I grew up with—most are pretty much dead: ROP newspaper advertising; terrestrial radio; local TV; business directories, direct mail. All are either dead or must somehow be adapted to our digital world.
I can’t advise any of these startups to send a news release announcing their new business because the daily and weekly newspapers have no space, and the business publications are going away. There are few local newspapers in which to place small-space ads and definitely no local radio stations. And billboards are too expensive for most startups.
What do these new sales managers do to find their customers? Most of these startups have limited financial means and little business experience. They have a dream and a business-feasibility study that says they can probably make something of their idea.
Now what? How do we apply the new media to build and maintain customer relationships? Here are six tips:
• The first must be to build a customer database and then begin to write and mail thank-you cards to those who helped them in their business development— and continue that practice forever. In the end, it may be the only marketing, sales and advertising they’ll ever need. Thank-you cards—People still love that human connection.
• Tip two is another forever sales tactic: Join and be a star in at least one business networking group. Sit at home and hide from human contact at your peril. You positively need to be regularly present in business settings, refining your sales pitch and making real-person contacts.
• For media, use what others in your category are successfully using. Do it better, be more responsive, use your carefully honed (and researched) point of difference. You can’t do enough research.
• Recognize that 80% of small-business leads and sales come from referrals and word of mouth. People still don’t like to buy from strangers, so build your brand on positive actions and pass out business cards like candy. And more thank-you cards.
• Develop a website and social media that connect you to your target customers and lead to sales. Discover one tactic that works and builds your tribe.
• Finally, be better than your competitors. Deliver, if you have to, and remember, just because traditional media may be moribund, what still matters are good manners, high energy and the most dynamic sales pitch ever, delivered by your No. 1 sales manager—you!
Bill Hoke is a semi-retired business consultant, former advertising agency creative director and owner and 2009 inductee into the pantheon of MARKETING IMMORTALS. He is editing the Fourth Edition of the Olympic Mountains Trail Guide for Mountaineer Books and has published two books of poetry. His wife Patricia Graf-Hoke is director of visitkitsap.