25. Be unique or be forgotten — 30 Days Of Medium
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If you’re just discovering my posts, you can check out the other 30 Days Of Medium below.
0. 30 Days Of Medium
1. What do you need to build your own website? — 30 Days Of Medium
2. How to find a business you love — 30 Days Of Medium
3. How to build your own website — 30 Days Of Medium
4. How to measure your website’s performance — 30 Days Of Medium
5. How to get more customers by answering their questions -30 Days Of Medium
6. The successful business website cheat sheet — 30 Days Of Medium
7. How to measure success — 30 Days Of Medium
8. Understanding the Online Sales Funnel — 30 Days Of Medium
9. What is traffic and why is it important? — 30 Days Of Medium
10. What is Google URL Builder and why should you use it? — 30 Days Of Medium
11. Double your traffic by automating your social media schedule — 30 Days Of Medium
12. How to tell what sells — 30 Days Of Medium
13. How I grew my Medium following 6,500% — 30 Days Of Medium
14. How you look at things matters — 30 Days Of Medium
15. How to SELL services to small businesses — 30 Days Of Medium
16. How to win more deals with effective proposals — 30 Days Of Medium
17. How to setup an online store in 10 minutes — 30 Days Of Medium
18. How to work from anywhere — 30 Days Of Medium
19. Why your website is sabotaging your sales — 30 Days Of Medium
20. Where does your traffic come from? — 30 Days Of Medium
21. How to actually recognise burnout — 30 Days Of Medium
22. How to hack your schedule and get twice as much done — 30 Days Of Medium
23. Don’t copy your competitors — 30 Days Of Medium
24. How to SEO optimise a blog post — 30 Days Of Medium
25. Be unique or be forgotten — 30 Days Of Medium
26. Going with your gut — 30 Days Of Medium
27. People don’t pay for average — 30 Days Of Medium
28. How to do keyword research — 30 Days Of Medium
29. Why The Pareto Principle is the world’s biggest hack — 30 Days Of Medium
30. Your content is more profitable than your telephone — 30 Days Of Medium
Don’t be forgotten
There are two types of small businesses.
Those that grow and those that survive.
I’m a big believer in the expression — “If you’re not going forward, you’re going backwards”.
And if your small business isn’t always growing and improving incrementally, you are surviving and waiting for the business grim reaper to visit you at some point in your future.
Forgettable businesses, get forgotten
The majority of small businesses don’t generate any business online.
The reason for this is because they don’t have a distinct brand or any kind of purposeful marketing strategy, outside perhaps attending some training events and tweeting a bit.
These businesses grow through referrals and exist on their current customer base.
This is dangerous however, because at some point the referrals will dry up and that existing customer base could cease to be.
Many small businesses have to close when they lose a key customer who sustains their business.
Again this is very dangerous. Your revenue should never be tied up in just one customer or your entire business is at risk all the time and you are beholden to this one customer.
Why unique businesses thrive
This is marketing basics.
They stand out and have clearly defined unique selling points.
As I’ve said before, there is nothing new under the sun, but there are limitless combinations of service offering, marketing and branding ideas you can apply to small businesses.
The businesses that thrive have decided with purpose these things:
- Who they are
- What they do
- How they do it
They most likely specialise in 1 or 2 things and make it their business to be excellent at these things, instead of average at 5 or 6 things.
Nobody pays for average.
People want to pay for specialism.
Making your business unique
There are a lot of ways you can make your business stand out, here are just some below:
- Niche down and specialise in a specific area. For example, a specialist WordPress agency vs another local web design company.
- Create a clear, consistent brand and apply it throughout all your marketing materials. For example, decide on fonts, colours and a brand style and use it religiously in everything you do.
- Be a little different. I really like space. I think it’s super cool, so incorporated it into my brand through videos, visually stunning imagery and in my logo.
- Don’t copy everyone else. If you like the colour yellow and love trains, make a brand that’s yellow and incorporate trains. Don’t copy what’s consistent locally, you’ll just be another boring generic brand. A genuine brand is far more interesting than one that is copied without any enthusiasm.
Some other simple things you can look at:
- Using technology (anything your competitors aren’t doing to give you an edge).
- Different marketing channels (if everyone is using Twitter, try video or Instagram).
- Working harder (if everyone else writes 1 blog post a week, write 5).
- Taking a contrasting viewpoint (if your competition say x is best, you say y is better then justify it).
Ultimately you don’t need to be hugely different, just different enough to stand out and be remembered as that company who does x, who who has a great brand.
You might also like this:
Why WordPress Is The BEST Platform To Build Your Business or Startup Website On
How To Build A Website — The Ultimate Guide
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