NEWS

Proven formula to make your small business more valuable

Let me show you a proven formula to make your small business more valuable. The one key factor that's going to make your small business more valuable is the fact that it is super profitable.

So how do we get there? Well we become super profitable by having great profit margins. The bigger the profit margin the more profitable we're going to be. So, how do we create those great profit margins? Well it's about having a big difference between your expenses and your revenue. Then the higher the profit margins and the more profitable you are going to be.

So how do we create that big difference between expenses and revenue? Well we make sure that we charge properly. Now there's a lot of reasons why people don't charge properly, whether it's a confidence thing, whether it's an oversight thing, but there's lots of reasons why people don't charge enough for the product or service that they offer.

There's lots of businesses who definitely don't do that and as a result the difference between their expenses and their revenue is minimal, hence their profit margins are poor and they are definitely not super profitable.

So how do we make sure that we charge properly? One of the biggest factors that allows you to charge properly is because you're an expert or a specialist. Like when you go to see a GP, the GP will always send you off to see a specialist and as we know as consumers and as patients we always get charged a whole lot more when we see a specialist. So for your industry, whether it's product or service related, are you an expert and are you a specialist? If you are then you're able to charge properly and charge well, which then should create a bigger difference between your expenses and revenue, creating greater profit margins and making you super profitable.

So how do we become an expert or a specialist? Well you become one by having a focus in your offering so you're not just being a general practitioner in your product or service offering but you're having a real focus as a specialist and an expert in your field. So by having that focus you become an expert and a specialist you're then able to charge properly, giving you bigger difference between revenue and expenses creating greater profit margins and again making you super profitable.

So how do we become focused in our offering? Well it's all because you've created a positioning in the mind of your customers by having a focus and a brand positioning. A positioning that is different to the competition, that is a specialist in what you are which is the number one rule when it comes to marketing. If you've created that positioning in the mind it'll allow you to then have a real focus in your product on service offering, which positions you as an expert and a specialist in your field, which allows you and gives you the confidence as well to charge properly for your product or service offering which creates a bigger difference to your expenses and revenue creating greater profit margins making you super profitable and ultimately adding more value to your business.

Marketing that your small business should try

In our book, Small Business Marketing DECLUTTERED, we talk about the amount of activities that are out there as options for small business owners to be able to communicate and market what they do and who they help.

Now let me read out a list of some of those activities. There's your branding, there's your website there's your media exposure, there's website search engine optimisation, there's social media, there's sending out flyers, there's email campaigns, there's attending a conference as an exhibitor or a guest, there's joining your local chamber of Commerce, there's starting a podcast, there's planning a workshop or an open day for customers and clients, there's listing your business on Google Places, there's starting a blog on your website, there’s starting a Google ads campaign, there's uploading videos onto YouTube, there’s setting up Google analytics to track your website visitors, there's writing a book…

There are so many marketing activities and so many options for small businesses to communicate. So there's no excuse for business owners to not do it. The excuse that business owners have are time, money, energy and skills and the biggest way to overcome those four key obstacles is to create some structure in the marketing that you're doing.

So whether that's creating a timing plan or a marketing plan, have an idea of what the schedule looks like each week, each month, each year to figure out what activities you're going to be doing.

The magic is in the consistency of the frequency of the activity that you're doing and consistency in the message that you're putting out there. The more consistent you are, the better chance you have of cutting through in the overcommunicated world that we live in.