Hi Victoria here, author of Zest for Success, owner and director of The Bookkeeper Hub, and HBA Encompass. And I’m back in the car with another episode of how The Bookkeeper Hub is building its business using the Zest for Success method. So yesterday, we had a brief chat about our target market. Did you love that Rolling Stones metaphor? The more I think it about it, I mean it’s horrible to think of these guys are now seriously old men. But when you’re talking about your target market, sometimes you need to think outside the square and really work out who it is that you’re talking to. Well I’ve got some notes again.
Today we’re gonna be talking about your market in depth. And, the first thing is the market capacity. So when you come up with a great idea for a product or a service, you have to think about how big the market is for that product and service and is there the capacity for the market to have a new player in the market because remember that you’re gonna be starting out small. If these big guys out there, they can play hard against you. And you need to make sure that whatever it is that you’re selling there’s gonna be big enough market that you’re gonna sell it too. We’ve said that you’ve got a product. We’ve said that it’s viable but you need to make sure that you’re gonna be able to sell enough of them to warrant a viable business. So the target market is important, but the capacity of the market is just about as vitally important. And while you’re doing that, have a good look at your competitors. You wanna see what they’re doing. How they’re doing it? And seeing how you can do it better, cheaper, smarter than they are. And one thing to remember that differentiating yourself on price, particularly trying to make yourself the lowest price is not the way to get into a market. The big guys can sustain a loss on products a lot longer that you can, a lot bigger resources. And really getting into a whole discounting cycle is the quickest way to the bottom. It’s a loss-loss situation I know. When I was a kid, we had a caravan at Fraser Island and we used to go out every weekend because there was a barge war on. There were two barge companies and the prices got lower and lower and lower as the newcomer tried to put the older guy out of business. And in this situation that the newcomer did have a bucket load of cash and he also happened to own one of the pubs in Fraser. It got to the stage where you’d go to the barge on a Friday night to go either and his barge not that it was free but you got a carton of beer think how long that could last for and what it did to the other guy. Needless to say for 20 odd years it was 101 competitive from then on. He got the other guy out of the market. Now, I’m not suggesting that’s a great tactic but you’ve got remember that there are always other people with longer deeper pockets than yours and a price driven campaigned at the bottom is really not the way to go. Sorry. We’re now changing from there. Gonna have a look at the 4 Ps of Marketing.
Now, these are my 4 Ps. Different people and different marketing gurus, I suppose, have different Ps. But these are the ones that I’m gonna talk about. So the first one is your purpose. The second one is your USP. The third one is your package. And the fourth one is promote. So, let’s have a look at your purpose first. What is your purpose? Why did you go into business in the first place and what do you want to achieve out of it? And that something that needs to come across into all your marketing messages. So for instance The Bookkeeper Hub, what is our purpose? Why did we go into business? I can tell you that one really easily. We’re bunch of accountants and we were sick of getting book work given to us that was in a crunch state. It meant that we spent hours and hours fixing it or redoing it and then not being able to charge the client for because they didn’t see the value in it. And we knew that Xero was an awesome product and we could get the bookkeeping done quickly and efficiently and get a great outcome for us and a great outcome for our clients. So we can now produce bookkeeping on a fixed fee. Going forward, you know where you stand and the accountants know when they pick up one of these files that the information that’s in there is correct. They love picking up those files and working with it because it just makes their job so much easier. And that means that in the time budget they’ve got to do a job, they got time to perhaps advice to the client to help them grow their business. That’s our purpose. Our purpose is to help people. I mean our tagline is because you’ve got better things to do. That’s because we’d rather see you go out and play with the kids or go for a surf than spend your Saturday morning sitting there entering information into a computer system, only to be told by your accountant that you stuffed it up. What a horrible way to go. And then, you talked about your UCP, your unique champions position. Some people call it a USP, unique selling proposition, exactly the same. What is it that you do that is different to anybody else. Now, it’s really hard sometimes when you’re out there doing the same job as everyone else. I mean you think about a plumber. You’re a plumber who goes out and plumbs new buildings. They’re dime a dozen. But what makes you the champion of what you do and makes the builders that you work with choose you over your competitors? I can guarantee you it’s usually not price. Sure. There’s these some people that are extremely price sensitive. There’s nothing you can do about that, but generally it comes back to something that you do that no one else does. It might be service. It might be the speed that you can get there if they call you because something is urgent. It could just be that you’re really good at your job and they know that. They can ask you to do a task and it’s going to be right a hundred percent of the time. So what you wanna do is make sure that whatever it is that you’re marketing in this that you’re talking about the experience that your customer is going to get from dealing with you. So, we get it right the first time. We’re available 24 hours a day. Guaranteed to be there within 45 minutes. There’s one plumber I heard of in Brisbane that has do his business massively because what he does is his guys go out and go on a job and they give him a call generally about ten to fifteen minutes before they’re finished. And he hops in his car and goes over and just after they’ve been there, he knocks on the door introduces himself as the owner of the business goes in with his bucket and makes sure that where ever it is that they were is spotlessly clean. I mean how’s that. That’s just an amazing thing to do. You think about the owner of the business cleaning up a toilet with the plumbers bin in. But what it does for the homeowner is it they know that this service is gonna be provided. They know that the plumbers come in and don’t make a mess and the boss really prides that. And makes sure that it is spotlessly clean when it finishes. I know if I had a tradie in my house, I’d love him to clean up after themselves. Some does. Some don’t. The ones that don’t usually don’t get asked back. And then, we talk about our package. Now, I‘m gonna read this one off because it’s a little bit deeper and it’s about the rewards for you as well as the rewards for your customer. It’s not about your own personal rewards. It’s about packaging any marketing that you’re doing so it’s explaining to your customers the why of what you do, the process of what you do, and the pay-off that your customer is going to do. Now, the reason for the recommended split for this is 20 percent of your purpose is your why. 10 to 15 percent is your process. Where the other day I was talking about the guy being I who is talking about his VoIP system, his phone system. And he got in there and talked about his all the technology and that’s all he spoke about. He didn’t talk about his why. He didn’t talk about his purpose. And then he didn’t talk about the benefits of what you gonna get. So with them, what’s in it for me? And that really needs to be between 65 and 70 percent of your marketing. What is in it for me? What is your customer gonna get from dealing with you. Lastly, we’re talking about promotions. Now, promotion has many varied forms as far as marketing and advertising goes. I’m not gonna try and delve into them. I’m a bookkeeper and an accountant. I’m not good marketing guru. I’m just giving you the background here so that you can understand what to do and how to do it. The best analogy that I can give you is to think about promotion like farming. Okay? You’ve got a farmer. He goes out. He plows the field. He plants his crop. He weeds his field. And then months and months later, he goes in and harvests his crop. That’s called farming as opposed to hunting. Where you go out. You source what it is that you’re hunting. You shoot them and you take them home. When we’re talking about marketing, we’re talking about farming rather than hunting. You wanna go out and you wanna promote what you’re doing. Get a loyal tribe of followers and then you start to sell to them. If you go out and meet someone and try to shove your business or your product down their throat like a hunter, they’re gonna back off and say you know what I’m not interested. I hate being sold to but if you can provide people with information that’s useful to them. And then gradually sell them one of your product or services then it’s a win-win situation. Think about what we’re doing here. Yeah. I’m telling you my secret. It’s not a massive secret. We’ve decided that from The Bookkeeper Hub that for us to be able to help our clients build their businesses from scratch it’s a service that we can provide because we’ve got that knowledge. Went out and wrote the book, Zest for Success, for start-up businesses and now doing these video services is explaining to you the concepts that are in the book. You know in a way that might be easier to understand cause not everyone likes reading but what it’s doing is that you getting used to us. That we’re here. That we care for you. That we really wanna do good job. Then, over time we’ll introduce you to our services. We’re not gonna shove it down your throat. With every few sessions, we talk about different services that we have and one day when you’re ready to buy, you’re gonna think ‘You know what, I’m gonna use The Bookkeeper Hub’. So that’s using Zest for Success method. Talking a little about the 4 Ps.
Tomorrow we’re gonna talk about making the most of your marketing. Getting the best bang of your buck.