Many marketers will tell you the key to having a good customer base is to have a lot of people talking about your product. While this is true – and proven – I think the exact science of getting these people to talk is the true mystery. That’s what marketing is, in essence: getting people to talk about your product (positively is the goal of public relations).
So if you have a small business, especially online, how do you get people to talk on your $0 advertising budget? The same way you got that good job you quit (or are working on quitting): networking. We won’t get into how to network right now, but rather why to network.
Marketing
Let’s start with a rundown of what marketing is good for. Marketing is a process based on expensive research – ideally, a budget of millions or billions of dollars – in the hopes that advertisements and trials generate enough attention and goodwill to achieve a 1/1000 rate of leads becoming customers.
Marketing is good if you want to target a very large audience across an entire nation – or country, or planet, as the case may be – and do not care where your leads come from, but only that they are coming.
Marketing is bad if you want to sell to a very specific population in a very small area. Sure, it is useful, but it can be very costly, and for many small business owners (including myself), if it can’t be done DIY-style, it can’t be done at all.
Networking
Networking is different from marketing because it is not the act of targeting, but rather doing something with a target. Networking is talking to others about yourself and your product and explaining why they need you and why you should be allowed to stick around for a while. It is generating a sale by creating a relationship, which is a major goal of marketing that very few advertisers seem to remember.
It is much easier for many people to build rapport one-on-one rather than hoping a 30-second television placement will be good enough to at least break even.
So why should you network if you have a small business?
Let’s say you talk to somebody about your duct tape wallets, and he decides he really doesn’t want one. But let’s also say he has a son-in-law who would love one, and that you conveniently slipped in your accounting classes and he needs an accountant. You could get freelance work plus generate business for both gigs just by casually talking about what you do.
Let’s also say you never network. Who’s going to buy from you when your commercial fails?
Nobody.
Balance your marketing with networking, or your business will not reach its full potential, or may completely fail. Remember: networking isn’t about selling your product; it’s about selling yourself.
