Marketing Around The Table
QUESTION: When starting out as an entrepreneur, how do you market yourself with no name?
1
Fred Schebesta
Director, Freestyle Media
Starting your own business comes with a lot of excitement, fun and freedom. It also means that the ultimate success or failure is dependent on you and the steps you take to market yourself and get noticed.
You should always be promoting: start promoting in every situation you are in. It’s all about building relationships with as many people as possible.
Get to know the natives: identify key channels such as industry events, blogs, websites, forums, industry magazines or anywhere where your target market is. The key at these events and channels is to meet an industry native and hope that they will give you a tour around and introduce you to different people. One fast way to get attention is to interview key people in the industry and write about them on your site.
Find your niche in the market and work out a way to make it your defining attribute. The main goal is to start writing articles and publishing content that the industry may be interested in. Start by writing a blog and creating a database of subscribers, even if it’s small. The long-term idea is that you formulate a good thought leadership session about your niche that you can then start speaking on.
Finally, consolidate. Once you have a number of well-written, interesting articles it’s time to put them into a book, publish it, promote it and get more speaking spots. Hopefully now you should have a little momentum and people will start to recognise your name and see you as an expert in your field.
2
Jenene Freer
CEO, Flossie.com
For us, the first important step was understanding that entrepreneurs are only ever as good as their product’s ability to perform exceptionally well – so we focused entirely on creating a product that was unique and outstanding for our market.
The next important step with making a name was to establish our ability to create news, innovate and deliver results. The idea was that by continually exceeding people’s expectations, we would be able to create goodwill and faith in our brand, which extended our opportunities.
The final piece of the puzzle was the most fun. When I was starting out I would go to the opening of an envelope – you name it, I went to it. My view was that if I attended (and sometimes gate-crashed) every possible industry event for long enough, eventually someone would wonder, ‘Who is that girl?’
I spoke at schools and universities, rotary clubs and charities. I even found a speaking agent and agreed to work for free to raise my profile. I also wrote industry articles, blogged (of sorts, given it was 10 years ago) and formed partnerships with independent radio and TV shows who were willing to give me a chance.
My persistence paid off and, on the smell of an oily rag, I developed a name for myself and, in doing so, awareness of the company and brand (nzgirl.co.nz) that I had created. Ten years on, I’ve used my profile to successfully launch Flossie.com.
Good products and media brands run by smart people that are reliable and easy to deal with will always generate support and groundswell!
3
Joe Tricarico
Director, 1827
1827 operates in the fashion and lifestyle industry and, in order to market ourselves in a creditable light and gain establishment within the marketplace, we have focused on three key areas.
The first is retail – identifying key retail partners to support and present the brand. These doors are highly regarded destinations for the consumer we want to attract and position the brand among other leading and exclusive labels. While our assortment may not have the initial depth of those established brands in these stores, it highlights the brand alongside the best labels in the industry, which is an ideal place to be.
Second is the media. We identified a broad cross-section of media with targeted advertising in key glossy publications for brand building, but focused more attention on editorial support, as it is a creditable and cost-effective form of exposure. All levels of this medium were accessed including a heavy digital feature – those with smaller targeted readership right through to the many with larger more accessible audiences. This element proved to be an integral part of creating awareness.
The third key area is that of endorsement – certainly a luxury, but a brilliant component in assisting brand establishment. 1827 was fortunate enough to engage several high profile celebrities (both local and global) willing to wear the brand. This created a whole new dimension of exposure as, inadvertently, these endorsees evolve into ambassadors for the brand and draw attention to the business.
4
Andrew Gibb
Managing director, Donny Boy Fresh Food Company/Preshafruit
Start with a hypothesis, identify a market need and build a compelling business case around it, backed by excellent quantitative and qualitative market research and product/concept development.
Sell the vision to your prospective clients, investors and other stakeholders in an enthusiastic but calm way. As much as possible let your product or concept do the ‘talking’.
In our case, we identified that consumers wanted fresher, more natural, less processed, cleaner label foods, without preservatives, additives, artificial colours and flavours.
We also identified that there was a large and growing market in the segments in which we wanted to compete.
A degree of complacency had crept into the markets we initially targeted; all market players were going to the same suppliers for the same types of products. We worked really hard to differentiate ourselves by being very responsive to our prospective clients’ needs, listening and responding quickly to their requirements.
Make yourself known to your larger target customers, but work with smaller clients to get your idea commercialised. In our instance, none of the big market players were ever going to be our first customer, yet our business plan was built around supplying them.
They were never going to take us seriously until we had a track record with smaller customers, had proven the concept, made the mistakes and optimised the products.
Be very targeted in your initial marketing; market to the people/segments you only really need to. Avoid mass marketing initially – if your product/concept is newsworthy use PR first, then advertising, but only when you are ready and good enough to market your product.
5
Karl Treacher
CEO, Brand Behaviour
Entrepreneurs live and die by their performance and reputation. The majority of successful entrepreneurs possess an unusually high degree of self-belief. It is this personality trait that provides peace of mind when the risks are high and sometimes stacked against them.
Let’s look at a human branding phenomenon that I like to call ‘The Danii Minogue Effect’. Now, while Danii Minogue is not technically an entrepreneur, much can be learned from her behaviour and approach to personal success.
You see, Danii began ‘acting famous’ well before she was – so much so that she actually became famous. She had studied (courtesy of her sister) what it looked like to be famous and what behaviour was imperative in convincing those that mattered that she herself had star quality. Through this process, she not only convinced others that she was famous, she actually convinced herself too.
Marketing yourself as an entrepreneur inherently means that you have to take risks. Humans are fundamentally hardwired to notice only what is different or outstanding. So the answer is simple: build a strategy and associated tactics that positions you as at the very least ‘different’, if not outstanding.
This may well require researching your industry/market and pioneering a series of concepts that are innovative. The main thing is, as Danii demonstrated so well, make sure that everything about you, your offering, visual language and approach is different to that of the rest of the market, while reflecting the traits that most people associate with success.
2 Comments
- Wrote on 28 Aug, at 05:37PM
- Wrote on 6 Sep, at 05:51PM