Heya, Steppers!

I’ve been wondering how I can provide the best tidbits of small business marketing wisdom to you, my readers.

At first I thought that this blog was going to be about how easy it is to start a “Bizness”… a small business that’s based around your hobbies and interests… by using all the tools that Web 2.0 has been making available to us.

And it still is about that.

HOWEVER…

Even though I thought that teaching about the creation of info-products would be the bread and butter of this blog…

…even though I also wanted to teach folks how to test-market their biz ideas cheaply so they didn’t risk their savings, take on “sharks” for partners, or risk borrowed money (hence, “Shoestring”)…

…even though the keys I’ve discovered to  marketing local sticks-and-bricks Biznesses with low or no cost interests ME…

… I’ve found somewhat unexpectedly that THESE posts on my blog  getting the most attention lately, both in the Blogosphere and the Twitterverse : The principles that my 15-year old  son and I are employing right now, to grow a small service biz from zero to $500 profit a day.

SO!

Since the proven principles and techniques we’re using to grow a local biz (to the five figures per month level) are what’s getting all the attention lately…  I’ve decided to write a short eBook about that.

Here’s the title:

Get Paid TODAY! Structure Your Small Business Startup to be Profitable from DAY ONE

‘Like’ it?

Heh.. hope so. THIS post today will become a chapter in the book. I’ll write the other chapters and publish it as an eBook, or on Kindle if it gets enough juice from you guys.  You likee, you sharee, I’ll give you a FREE copy of the finished work. MMMmm-kay?

Awright, Steppers! Here we go. The chapter on…

Finding Your Niche: Be a Big Fish in a Little Pond

The first lesson I learned in marketing was that I needed to think small, not big.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against growing a biz to gigantic proportions. What I mean by thinking small is proving a business on a small scale FIRST, before investing huge amounts of time, energy, and capital.

But when it comes to penetrating a market and just crushing it, it’s easier to do it by starting small rather than going balls-out.

So we’ve decided to think small for the moment. Let’s look at one way in which to think small for your service business: geographically.

When I first started a window cleaning company in the late nineties in Colorado Springs, I started out by advertising in a publication that went out all over the city. It cost a lot and returned just a few phone calls for exactly the same reason: it had more readers.

Because is had more readers it cost more to advertise, and because it cost more I could only afford to put a tiny ad in it… an ad that was lost among dozens of other, better, bigger ads for the same service.

I was a little fish in a big ocean.

In other words… my advertising cost was EATING ME ALIVE.

Then my friend Kathleen pointed out that I should try to specialize. Instead of advertising to all 600,000 Colorado Springs residents and getting lost in the noise of all the competition… why not put my little business-card-sized ad in a local newspaper of a smaller neighborhood?

Marketing a Local Business on a Shoestring

A few miles to the north of Colorado Springs was the “Tri-Lakes” area, a tight little community with some very nice houses. Lots of Air Force retirees and nouveau riche yuppies. There were only about 8,000 homes total being reached by the Tri-Lakes Tribune, which had NOT ONE window cleaning advertiser.

Bingo! Big fish, little pond.

I placed a small ad on Monday and got a paying customer that Wednesday… the very day that the weekly paper came out. The calls kept on rolling in and I was off to the races, with a smaller advertising expense than I had been using to try and market in the Springs.

Author’s Note: I should mention that the small business marketing techniques I used in the late nineties, early 2000’s are much different than what I use now. With the advent of Google and social media, the techniques and methods are cheaper and easier than ever to implement. But the principles of effective low-cost marketing have not changed. In this book we’ll reveal what is working NOW to market local businesses, but I want for this book to be relevant 100 years from today. Therefore, along with WHAT is working today we’ll also share WHY it works.

Get Paid TODAY By Dominating a Smaller Market

Around the time I chose on a small geographic area to focus my marketing efforts, my first marriage was ending and my martial arts business was being restructured. So I was in need of a HUGE cash infusion, like, RIGHT NOW.

And that’s exactly what happened for me; my window cleaning company instantly replaced a full time income… and more.

All of a sudden I went from cleaning the windows of two or three houses a week at $250 or so a pop… to two or more houses per day. 

It got to the point that I had to turn business away, or call in competitors (no kidding) to partner with me on big projects.

Within weeks I had to hire helpers just to keep up with all the new business flowing in.

All this happened as soon as I decided to concentrate my marketing to just one, well-chosen area.

There were other advantages to limiting the business geographically as well:

• In a smaller community, word gets around more easily. Word of mouth referrals went through the roof
• I began to form joint relationships with other local business owners, leveraging my reach
• There is less driving around to perform your services when you focus on one, ten-mile radius to serve

Ironically, by trying to be all things to all people I fell flat on my face. By trying to market my startup window cleaning company to every Tom and Harry in Colorado Springs… I was paying a lot out, and getting Dick in return 😉

But once I decided to focus on one niche, it became a cinch. It’s easy to dominate a market if you think small enough.

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Get Paid TODAY! book by Kurt Frankenberg

Okay, Steppers! I decided to stop THERE but that isn’t the end of this story by a long shot.

<==  for the rest of this story (and over a dozen more not only by me, but several millionaire entrepreneurs that also started on a Shoestring), treat yourself to Get Paid TODAY! Structure Your Small Business Startup to be Profitable from DAY ONE on Amazon.

Til then,

Keep Stepping!

Kurt