David Gildeh

I  spent some time with some new business entrepreneurs this morning at a seminar on Raising Revenues by Prevista. I went there in the hope of learning some new ideas for my own start-up, but found out that I was several chapters ahead of the group and left early (it was really setup for beginners). I offloaded a few good ideas on the group from what I’d learnt and came out realising that the past year, I’ve really learnt a lot and should start sharing this stuff! It was this same epiphany that led me into Drupal consulting after attending a similar seminar last summer and ending up teaching the class about website marketing!

Firstly, I couldn’t help but notice so many people there today still think of advertising as marketing. Get a product or service up, and then start advertising to find customers. Not only is this wrong, its costly and IT CAN KILL YOUR START-UP!

No start-up should be advertising. Advertising is a one way conversation from you to your market (if you’re lucky enough to know exactly who they are!). If you haven’t tested your message face to face with actual customers, how do you know your message works? How do you know the market you actually think is your market is actually your market? Until you’ve spoken directly to customers, and sold a few times, you simply don’t know anything, its only assumptions, and assumptions are dangerous!

Advertising should only be used for two things:

1. Growing Your Business – Once you know exactly who your market is, and what messages they respond to (from selling to a few of them already), then advertising could make sense. That way you aren’t wasting money advertising to the wrong people with the wrong message and you can be confident that your messages are effective.
2. Brand Building – Advertising won’t make a sale, it will however re-enforce your message and brand in your market. Once you have a solid and growing business, then you can afford to spend some money building your brand to ensure it stays in peoples minds.

Both of these are for later stages of your business, not the first stages. I don’t expect any business to advertise in the first 2-3 years (if ever) of life. During that time you should be directly talking to customers through the web, cold calling, trade shows and most importantly networking. All your customers should be people you found or were referred to. Once you start hitting a home run, and you find the same people respond to the same message for repeated sales, then you know that you can broadcast that message successfully and get a positive response.

My only caveat to advertising is web advertising such as Google Adwords. The difference for this form of advertising is that done properly, you can actually monitor accurately the response to several adverts relatively cheaply. Not only are people searching for your product (so you pretty much have solved finding your market) you can also tailor your advert messages over time to see what works and what doesn’t. Its another way of “speaking” directly to your customers, and done properly can start paying very handsomely. However, even then, I would suggest this is done later on in the business once you’ve spoken to a few customers and made some sales, as when you’re paying up to £15 per click for some popular key words, you’d like to be sure that you’re messages are strong and you are pulling in paying customers!

In future blogs, I’ll share some of the techniques I’ve tried and loved that can hopefully kickstart your business. spent some time with some new business entrepreneurs this morning at a seminar on Raising Revenues by Prevista. I went there in the hope of learning some new ideas for my own start-up, but found out that I was several chapters ahead of the group and left early (it was really setup for beginners). I offloaded a few good ideas on the group from what I’d learnt and came out realising that the past year, I’ve really learnt a lot and should start sharing this stuff! It was this same epiphany that led me into Drupal consulting after attending a similar seminar last summer and ending up teaching the class about website marketing!

Firstly, I couldn’t help but notice so many people there today still think of advertising as marketing. Get a product or service up, and then start advertising to find customers. Not only is this wrong, its costly and IT CAN KILL YOUR START-UP!

No start-up should be advertising. Advertising is a one way conversation from you to your market (if you’re lucky enough to know exactly who they are!). If you haven’t tested your message face to face with actual customers, how do you know your message works? How do you know the market you actually think is your market is actually your market? Until you’ve spoken directly to customers, and sold a few times, you simply don’t know anything, its only assumptions, and assumptions are dangerous!

Advertising should only be used for two things:

Growing Your Business – Once you know exactly who your market is, and what messages they respond to (from selling to a few of them already), then advertising could make sense. That way you aren’t wasting money advertising to the wrong people with the wrong message and you can be confident that your messages are effective.
Brand Building – Advertising won’t make a sale, it will however re-enforce your message and brand in your market. Once you have a solid and growing business, then you can afford to spend some money building your brand to ensure it stays in peoples minds.

Both of these are for later stages of your business, not the first stages. I don’t expect any business to advertise in the first 2-3 years (if ever) of life. During that time you should be directly talking to customers through the web, cold calling, trade shows and most importantly networking. All your customers should be people you found or were referred to. Once you start hitting a home run, and you find the same people respond to the same message for repeated sales, then you know that you can broadcast that message successfully and get a positive response.

My only caveat to advertising is web advertising such as Google Adwords. The difference for this form of advertising is that done properly, you can actually monitor accurately the response to several adverts relatively cheaply. Not only are people searching for your product (so you pretty much have solved finding your market) you can also tailor your advert messages over time to see what works and what doesn’t. Its another way of “speaking” directly to your customers, and done properly can start paying very handsomely. However, even then, I would suggest this is done later on in the business once you’ve spoken to a few customers and made some sales, as when you’re paying up to £15 per click for some popular key words, you’d like to be sure that you’re messages are strong and you are pulling in paying customers!

In future blogs, I’ll share some of the techniques I’ve tried and loved that can hopefully kickstart your business.