Marketing Blueprint - Part8
8 ) Find New Uses For Your Existing Products And Services
Sometimes when we are so close to our businesses we tend to think one way. But few businesses ever successfully continue long without stepping outside the box. One client I consulted with had a struggling business that was excellent at providing their products and services.
The problem was their marketing was near non-existent. The owner initially couldn’t see past making occasional personal sales calls to potential clients or paying his monthly “due†for his yellow pages ad. Outside of those two activities they simply sat back and hoped and waited for something magical to happen. It didn’t.
On top of holding a poor marketing stance before contacting me, a very aggressive multi-billion dollar national franchise moved into the area. This unexpected competition sent the company’s already shaky business careening down hill even faster.
Since my client was a small time operator and could never afford to go head-to-head with such a large competitor, we chose to look for overlooked opportunities. One solution we found was to stop fighting solely on a local level and go global.
We covertly set about putting plans in place to help people across the country and abroad launch independent businesses in this same industry — without the expense and headaches of going it alone. We basically created a clever business opportunity of independent companies who would need to outsource to my client to have orders processed.
The win to the independent business owners is they get to run their ‘own business’ without the typical six to seven figure debt that comes from starting a business in that industry. The obvious win to my client is they will get ongoing revenues their major competitors will remain clueless about for quite some time. Threat neutralized.
Repositioning an aspect of your business is just one way to create new uses for your existing products and services. There are many others. How can you find new uses for your products and services that others are overlooking now?