Get Creative with Your Marketing, and Focus on the Benefits
that Your Product Provides
Just as with creating compelling offerings, the key to great marketing is focusing on how you can provide value to people.
When crafting your messages, don’t devote too much attention to the features of your product size, power or speed, etc. Instead focus on the core benefits for the customer: how it will help them.
These core benefits often relate to the emotions you evoke in customers, not the physical goods or services you deliver.
Consider the V6 Ranch in California, whose owners emphatically state:
“We’re not selling horse rides, we’re offering freedom.”
Similarly, a yoga retreat may not really sell yoga instruction but rather stress relief and tranquility.
Once you know what core benefits you’re offering, how can you get the word out, considering your micro-business’ budget?
You need to hustle.
Hustling means getting creative with marketing (e.g., connecting with journalists, collaborating with other companies, writing guest posts for blogs) rather than paying for advertising.
Typically, hustling will bring in far better results than traditional marketing, at a fraction of the cost; hence, it is crucial for micro-businesses.
Another creative and powerful marketing tool is strategic giving.
Think about it; if you give your product away to customers or other stakeholders, or help them in other ways, what will they do? Most likely they’ll thank you by spreading the word.
Consider John Morefield, an unemployed architect who started a “5-cent architect advice” shop in a Seattle farmers market.
He really gave professional architectural advice for just a nickel, but many customers were so pleased with his work they commissioned him for more at full price.
The story even got picked up by CNN and other news channels, creating lots of buzz and even more customers for him.
Get creative with your marketing, and focus on the benefits that your product provides.