How this business owner’s limiting beliefs capped his growth and income
8:13am
East of the Mississippi
Years ago I found a bar of soap I really liked.
Exciting, I know.
This was when Dr. Squatch men’s soap was running constant ads on social media…
And I wanted a piece of the action!
Here’s the story, bubbles:
Priced at a modest $2.99, the soap in question was made in my home town of Saint Paul with all natural ingredients.
And it sat on a shelf next to the $9 French milled soap in fancier packaging –– le French giving an extravagant experience there in the aisle, while the Saint Paul brand was in basic value packaging.
The whole setup smelled like a lilac-scented opportunity.
I contacted the owner to see if I could help him grow his soap brand.
He was excited.
I was excited.
We started exchanging ideas…
Then he went silent.
When I heard from him again, months later, it turned out he had medical issues and was understandably focused on his health.
But momentum was lost.
We didn’t work together after that.
And while I was excited by the opportunity to grow a brand…
In hindsight, I’m not sure what I would have been able to do for him.
Because of his beliefs about the market and the way he was running his bid’ness limited his income.
Here’s what I mean:
My role as a copywriter, as a growth partner, isn’t just about words on the page.
It’s to act with skin in the game and find ways to improve your offer and make more money for the business.
The owner of this soap company produced the soap himself, in his garage, and he had limited production capabilities.
Fixing that would be essential, before any digital advertisements and a quick flow of overwhelmed his supply.
Plus, he didn’t have an online shopping cart to collect payments.
(Which of course I could have set up, but that didn’t matter –– because he didn’t believe people would pay to mail soap anyhow.)
So without an increase in production, we were hamstrung.
Say we beat that problem, or skipped the online part all together and stayed at his current capacity?
We could have fancied-up his packaging to justify a higher price point. Same production levels, higher price, more income.
Seriously, we could have doubled the price with premium packaging alone.
We could have found new stores to sell the fancier item, and dropped the grocers that didn’t match the new premium branding.
We could have played up the local aspect, or found a way to make the bar more manly or feminine or some other angle a la Dr. Squatch.
We coulda given the soap unique scents other brands didn’t offer.
Cookies. Coffee. French Onion Soup?
All options, to be sure.
But his budget… his production capabilities… and ultimately his “no one buys fancy or online soap” mindset were the limiting factors.
I hope he’s doing well, in health and in business. I haven’t really thought about him until now.
Today I partner with established brands that are already successful, and want to grow more successful.
There are a lot of small players out there –– like this soap company –– who are an inch deep in marketing. Which is fine for them as individuals…
Yet without marketing, their brand growth is stunted.
Brand owners often think if they have the best product, people will find them.
That’s rare.
It requires constant word-of-mouth.
Much better to be proactive.
Tell people what you have.
Remind them often.
Marketing is the engine that drives commerce.
Marketing brings awareness to your brand.
Marketing provides “reasons why” you should choose one brand over another, one restaurant over another, one service over another.
Marketing drives emotions, and emotions drive decisions.
And the most powerful emotions drive us to take immediate action, not action later when we see a bar of soap on the shelf, fighting with le French to stand out.
Quick action is better, for the seller and the buyer.
Stay clean,
Jeffrey Thomas
Direct Response Marketer and Growth Partner
PS. The emotions that drive quick action are laid bare in Denny Hatch and Paul Bobnak’s book, The Secrets of Emotional, Hot-Button Copywriting.
You can download the first chapter –– FEAR –– free at HotButtonCopy.com or order the full 201-page book from Amazon at HotButtonCopy.com/order
PPS. If you have an established brand that you’d like to grow with ads that drive people to your website… videos that capture attention… landing pages that make persuasive arguments… and emails that continue to drive attention and sales…
Well, good for you.
Oh, you want to grow your brand?
You want to off-load some of that thinking and that marketing effort?
You’d like to test new angles, new sales pages, new ads?
You want to make more money?
If you run a qualified business with offers and customers, I can help.
Hit reply and let’s get frothy.