The 4 Biggest Mistakes A Small Business Makes

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Some entrepreneurs and business owners think that having a great product and understanding how to run a business are the most important factors to small business success. Bear with me a moment while I differ with you. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how good your product is, if you don’t correct the following mistakes you’ll not see the success you crave.

The four capital mistakes of open source
Creative Commons License photo credit: opensourceway

1. Not understanding who your favorite customer is.
Your favorite customer should be the one who represents the largest life time value to your business, This is the customer who buys the most and keeps coming back because he/she is very satisfied. If you can get the majority of your customers to look like this one you are on the right road.

2. Not understanding the favorite customer’s business problem or the reason he/she invests in your product/service.
If you truly understand the customer’s point of pain and provide a solid solution to the customer’s problem that represents good value to the customer then he/she will keep returning for more.

3. Not understanding the words the customer uses to describe your product/service.
You, the entrepreneur, tend to describe your products or services in the technical language that you are familiar and comfortable with. Does it ever occur to you that the customer may use different words or phrases when referring to your product/service or their problem. Only when you use language that is familiar to them are you truly communicating with them.

4. Not building a marketing message that truly describes your value to the favorite customer.
Your marketing message is the way you describe to the client how your product or service will solve the client’s problem and ease the pain the client is feeling. The marketing message is not a Universal Selling Proposition (USP) or Unique Selling Point which relates only to the product and not the customer.

If you use the customer’s words and phrases in your marketing message then you’ll truly be communicating with the customer. These are also the words and phrases that will be part of the content in your brochures and most importantly in your website content. This way the search engines will catalog your company using these same key words and phrases that the customers use to search for you, making you that much easier to find on the web.

If you are just starting out in business, then you want to make sure that your first task is to truly understand your target customers and build your company thrust around them. Contact us if you have questions.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jim Smith
YCHANGE International
Jim Smith mentors entrepreneurial start-ups and counsels small to mid sized companies that are looking to expand or are under performing or under capitalized.

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