Can Black businesses dominate the use of the most potent marketing weapon?
By Aunkh Aakhu
bettermarketingmastery.com
Looking at the numbers on Black business and the disparities in earnings between them all other ethnic groups, one would think that it’s virtually impossible for Black business to get a competitive advantage. For the most part this is a pretty safe assumption. However since of 95 percent of all Black businesses are solo-preneurships or non-employee organizations, most things are done by the owner. In a general sense this is a disadvantage because the business owner has to wear all the hats in the organization.
This leads to not being able to focus on what matters most: attracting quality customers.
There may be a way to turn this around and in doing so make Black business a whole lot more competitive. The most potent weapon in marketing today is personal contact. Nothing can generate the kind of impact it does. If you have a single owner of a business, they certainly will be the ones to interact with the prospects and customers yet many of our businesses have not recognized the enormous opportunity there and do not have a well-developed strategy for dealing with this reality.
With personal contact you have two great possibilities. One is to create a powerful sales system and the other is to produce high level client education. To execute either of these at a high level can be done but requires careful planning by the owner.
If you are doing your own sales presentation you should ensure you have a lot of tools to aid the process scripts, brochures, testimonial letters, forms, power point presentations, direct mail pieces, newsletters etc. The second is to have a well-developed client education process. You can do this through seminars, consultations, tradeshows and specialized knowledge prepared that reflect the overall marketing objectives of your company in relation to customer education.
Clearly this would take some effort but it is probably a key strategy for single person operations to develop. Huge corporations can’t create the kind of personal contact that an individual owner can create, so the average Black business owner can flip this into a positive with a little effort. This is the kind of competitive advantage that could inspire customer loyalty because at the end of the day, your customer knows you and more importantly you know them. With huge corporations it’s very easy for customers to feel like they just don’t matter. That’s a huge opening. Leverage the most potent form of marketing to elevate your business.
Aunkh Aakhu is C.E.O. Better Marketing Mastery bettermarketingmastery.com. When it comes to maximizing profits you win with better marketing!
