Cliches, axioms, emojis
The cobbler’s children have no shoes.
Practice what you preach.
Egg on your face.
SMH.
Have you ever rushed to roll out a new product without doing your due diligence and have it fall flat?
Boy, we sure did.
This month, we rolled out our new Back to Business…but Better marketing course for small businesses. It’s a GREAT course, rooted in research, well planned and with an implementation timeline so beautiful it would bring a tear to your eye if you liked that sort of thing.
But here’s where we went wrong.
We KNOW our proven, award-winning method of research, planning, implementation and evaluation works. One look at our happy clients and our trophy case will tell you it’s true.
We also know that part of our research involves identifying your target audience and then building a profile, or avatar, for the ideal client so you can plan your marketing outreach to hit the right audience.
Well, we were given an offer we couldn’t refuse to launch this amazing course earlier than we were ready for and…we jumped.
What we found is that our target audience is not there.
Our target audience for this program IS:
- The marketing department of one in a small to mid-sized business or nonprofit organization.
- It’s the small team of people, usually in HR or sales, that are tasked with marketing which usually ends up creating a massive dived between sales and “marketing.”
- It’s the business owner whose office manager is trying to keep up with social media and email marketing, along with managing payroll, accounts receivable and keep to the budget (in which case, you probably need to make a new hire or contract with an agency. Your office manager is overwhelmed.)
Our target audience for this program IS NOT
- Main Street restaurateurs or shop owners who are scrambling to find enough employees to cover all the open shifts, or who are closing early or trying to stay afloat as the world adjusts to current normal, let alone what is going to happen in Q4 or next year.
It was a giant reminder of why we insist on research and planning INSTEAD of throwing a big ol’ plate of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Lesson learned – do your homework. Do the research. Make the plan.
So, we have no shoes, like the famed cobbler’s children.
We didn’t practice what we preach. We have egg on our faces – how embarrassing is it to ignore our own advice and jump at a wonderful opportunity without having done our homework.
SMH.
Here’s the good news – this is not a setback or a loss. It’s a gigantic win!
Because we leapt before we looked, we now have an opportunity to spend some time with Main Street restaurateurs and shop owners who are scrambling to see how we can help.
Every Monday from July 12 through August 16, we’ll be at the Adam’s Hub in Carson City between 1 and 2:30 p.m. during the quiet part of the afternoon to listen to your business challenges and offer our best recommendations to help you out.
And guess what?
We’re going to learn just as much from you as you will from us.
We are honored to be able to have this chance to meet with you and share in your joy and pain of running your business. To serve our community. To meet you where you are and connect with you on a one-to-one basis.
We can’t wait to see you!
P.S. We promise to use none of the cliches, axioms, emojis or text talk found in this article. As word geeks, we sometimes have a little too much fun with them all!