By Rieva Lesonsky, CEO, GrowBiz Media
Marketing is the “voice” that drives business success. Without marketing, many of the best products and top services would go unheralded and perhaps even undiscovered.
So, how do you attract customers? While there are literally thousands of places you can turn to for marketing advice, from books, to experts to Web sites, there’s one source that is all too often overlooked—Benjamin Franklin. Yes, that Ben Franklin. The one who said, “Time is money.” So the next time you’re looking for some marketing advice, before you waste your time (and money), listen to the wisdom of one of America’s first—and most celebrated--entrepreneurs.
The point of marketing is to draw attention to your company. Franklin believed you could do that in two ways—“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” In either case, it’s all about delivering value and telling people about it.
For some of you, customer involvement is crucial to your success. Bring customers into your shops and restaurants by staging events like fashion shows, wine or beer tastings and fund-raising promotions. Retail and service entrepreneurs can host seminars, lectures and workshops. As Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
The best marketing campaigns will not make up for shoddy products or bad service. Reputation was essential to Franklin: “Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.” And “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”
It’s your business. Sure, you can hire out or delegate some tasks. But at the end of the day, you’re in the driver’s seat. Franklin’s advice, “Drive thy business or it will drive thee,” is something business owners need to remember every day.
One of the most important rules of marketing is that it must ring true. As Ben reminded us, “What you seem to be, be really.”
Your business is in a constant state of evolution--and your marketing plans must evolve with it. So be open to change. As Franklin said, “When you're finished changing, you're finished.”
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