The one factor which separates millionaire business owners from the rest is their willingness to promote themselves. Too many entrepreneurs hide behind a corporate façade, trying to make it look as if they have big corporations. However, people want to buy from people, and the business owners who put themselves and their personalities into their marketing attract more customers than those who don’t.
Does the idea of self-promotion create a sickening feeling in your stomach? A lot of business owners are shy because they don’t feel worthy of promotion. If you’re starting out in business and you are working out of your garage or at the kitchen table, it’s easy to assume no one wants to do business with you. It’s easy to undervalue your own skills. In response your first impulse is to create a big, fancy corporate name and to put up a website with an eye-catching logo. This is the opposite of what you should do.
Put your personality into your marketing and make your business look small. Customers love doing business with the owner, not some faceless corporation. Many of the most successful (and smart!) companies use a personality, or individual, as the front person in order to build a relationship with customers.
Take for instance, the Wendy’s restaurant chain. Years ago, Wendy’s had a famous commercial campaign where a woman said, “Where’s the beef?” Funny as those commercials were in the 1980’s, and as well-known as they became, they did not generate sales for Wendy’s restaurants. The campaigns that outperformed those entertaining commercials were those featuring Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s. Each time Wendy’s introduced a special sandwich, Dave would go to the studio and shoot a commercial. Now, this was painful for Dave and everybody else involved. He had never performed in front of a camera. It took him dozens of takes just to say his name right. But Dave stuck with it because these commercials generated more customers than any other advertising approach.
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