Is your business a well-kept secret?

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Old-school marketing, photo by Atelier Teee

For small business owners, marketing is a top priority. However, many people feel uncomfortable promoting their business - or even talking about it unless asked! People don’t feel comfortable talking about their business and selling their services. They feel guilty about “tooting their own horn” or “bragging”. This may come hand-in-hand with feeling guilty about collecting money from people, a disaster for business that aren’t paid up front.

I used to feel this way about self-promotion but I now realize that telling people about my business is just about telling people about me, and why would I want to hide what I am doing?

Here are some ideas to get around marketing shyness:

Talk about your business as “what you’re up to” - there’s no shame in letting people know what you spend most of your time doing (hopefully)
Share what makes you new, different, or unique instead of what makes you better. For example, you could say “my online accounting software has a new user interface that focuses on usability” rather than “our user interface rules - theirs sucks”. This presents your product or service without judging it better or worse than others
Tell people what inspired the business in the first place. Nothing markets a business like the founder with a twinkle in her eye. If people like your story they’ll want to work with you somehow.
Consider that by not marketing your business, you are actually doing the world a disservice - assuming your product is beneficial to your customers, by not marketing it you are making it unavailable to everyone, which is more selfish than bragging would ever be.
Think about what your objection to marketing and self-promotion is. Ask yourself: “is there something I have to ignore in order for this belief to be true?”
Imagine that self-promotion and marketing was not an issue for you at all, and all your objections, issues, and shyness around it - what would be possible? Is it something worth overcoming yourself for?