Having a business means hard work and no time to many people. In fact, some see that as a badge of honor. The problem with this, is that you cannot do everything well.
Enter the Consultant Marketer ready to help you get more business, more loyal customers, and believe it or not…more friends. That’s right…more friends.
Consultant Marketers help business owners get more business by marketing the owner’s skills as if the owner was a consultant. Just about every main street business owner answers customers’ questions, but many do not realize the importance of answering them BEFORE the questions are asked!
We can illustrate this with a short story and yes, it will work for your business too! (See, I answered a question before you asked it).
Dave has a hardware store in a small city of about 50,000 people. He is down the street from an Ace Hardware in one direction, and a Lowes in the other direction. At first glance it is a wonder that Dave can even STAY in business much less succeed!
Here is Dave’s secret. He thinks of himself as a hardware consultant, not a hardware store owner. He absolutely loves talking with customers but hates the tedious work of running a business. Sound familiar?
A few years ago, Dave was approached by an individual who claimed he could help him succeed by working on his local online marketing strategy. Dave was highly skeptical as both Lowes and Ace Hardware were taking his customers right and left, literally.
Dave listened to the concept of Consultant Marketing and the importance of a local online marketing plan. Not only did he listen, he decided to implement it and has never looked back.
You see, some people in the city knew Dave. He was highly respected and knew his stuff about the hardware business. Unfortunately, his customers really don’t care about the hardware business. They care about solving their current problem the fastest way with the least amount of effort.
Dave used to focus on selling his items to his customers. Steve, a Consultant Marketer, helped Dave boost his business, have more fun, and focus on helping customers, not trying to sell them stuff. The art of marketing is to make selling superfluous and this really applies. In other words, after helping people, the sale is automatic.
So How Did Steve Help Dave?
The first thing he did was to make Dave’s business “local friendly”. He revamped Dave’s poor website with articles and content that his customers wanted to read. Steve helped Dave deliver this information to his customers before they asked. For that and several other new ideas, Dave was handsomely rewarded with the business and a ton of word-of-mouth referrals.
Steve helped Dave focus on a niche that the two other stores were not filling. The best way to explain this is to answer the “why” factor. As people wander through a store they see many things that they have absolutely no idea what they are used for. Let’s look at a few examples:
Customer number 1 comes into the store to find a way to hang a towel rack in the bathroom. SHE is tired of waiting for someone in the house to fix it (can you guess who?). When she goes down the aisle with the bolts, nuts, and fasteners guess what…Dave has a display that shows how some of these fasteners are used. One of these is a towel rack hanging on a piece of sheetrock or wallboard.
The display shows five different ways to fasten the towel rack to the wall and has a small card next to each explained the pros and cons of each. Steve (Dave’s Consultant Marketer) helped him write up some small cards explaining how each fastener worked next to each example. Steve also put these on Dave’s website with a short article or video narrated by Dave about how each of these work. There was also a card next to the display with Dave’s website name and where to find the video.
Here we see Steve helping Dave with the concept of Circular Marketing. Circular Marketing is where one marketing or helpful solution references another two or three marketing solutions. In this case the card referenced not only how to fasten the towel rack, but also the following:
1. The in-store display Dave had set up.
2. The website where Dave shows how to hang it or links to another video showing how to do it.
3. The short article that Dave has on his website and his recommendations on towel racks.
4. The towel racks he has in his store.
That is just a short list of the items referenced by this simple display, but let’s look at the benefit to the customer and ultimately to Dave.
The customer is impressed with the display and the ease to find her answers on how to hang the towel rack. In turn, she purchases not only the hardware to hang the towel rack, but a new towel rack to hang in another area.
A week later, the customer is visiting a friend’s house and notices a loose towel rack. She immediately mentions Dave’s website and Dave gets another customer and another friend. Of course he makes a couple of new sales as well.