It’s an attractive term isn’t it.
The thing is, so many businesses I speak to believe that it exists. They believe in a “build it, and they will come” business model.
With so many SEO and Social Media blogs all over the place shouting the odds about how easy, quick and cheap it is to get your product out there, it would be easy to believe that they’re right. That signing up to Twitter and Facebook will give you a megaphone onto the masses, and that Google will feed you a million unsuspecting and frivilous customers ready to lay their wallets down in front of you.
Sadly, it just isn’t true. Believe it or not, selling a product requires – selling.
The internet has no highstreet, no well trodden and predefined pathway in which a new store can open to enjoy the footfall. Your new website is an island in a vast, vast ocean.
I speak to people who would classify themselves as entrepreneurs every day. What I often see is people in the business of making things – often very well. They’re great product people, with a vision and a rigorous application of hard work.
But the difference between a product person and an entrepreneur, is that the entrepreneur knows how to sell that product, how to get it out there, and trade it at a profit.
It isn’t good enough to spend your whole budget on building a site, or designing new packaging, if you haven’t got a way to put it infront of an audience yet.
If you’re reading this a little too late for that tip, then I’m afraid there’s probably just one asset left for you to exhaust – time. Welcome to the slow burning word of mouth marketing that most of us endure to get ourselves out there. You’ll soon find that Twitter, Facebook and Natural Search are just channels to practice the same as you do over the phone or face to face – and without a strategy or a budget, the scale and impact that’s possible is pretty limited.
My point? Plan first. Think about marketing and selling. If you don’t know how to sell it yet, then think twice about building it in the first place. Marketing isn’t free, and it never will be.
Featured photo courtesy of Mhauri
