Like gravity, business has universal laws that apply to it and which you ignore at your own peril.
These laws govern the way an entrepreneur thinks, acts and prioritises their activities.
Over the next two weeks I’m going to look at six of these important laws and how they impact you.
This week let’s look at the first 3.
1. The Law of the Mind
The aim of your marketing is to enter the mind of your prospect.
To penetrate through the more than 5,000 commercial messages the average person is exposed to every day.
The purpose of marketing is to gain top of mind awareness. Large companies like McDonalds and Coke spend millions in advertising each year to maintain the top of mind awareness of their customers.
While you may operate on a different scale with a vastly smaller budget, the principle remains the same – you need to win top of mind awareness in your area for your industry.
How can you do this?
You start by branding yourself as a specialist or expert and by seeking to educate as many people as possible.
It is essential if you want to create awareness of your products or services that you stack your marketing.
This means that you maintain a theme of colour, style and design throughout all your marketing activities including your advertising, mail outs, stationery, sign writing, uniforms etc.
To build top of mind awareness in small business, you must own a lane; be the expert and ensure consistency in the way that message is delivered to the marketplace.
2. The Law of Perception
Marketing is all about perception. It has little or nothing to do with reality and everything to do with a person’s perception of reality. In other words, people will perceive you based on the picture you paint.
Human beings are quick to judge one another; and what is the foundation for the judgement – often it’s their first impressions or perception.
Some examples include the look of your office, stationery, clothes or uniform, personal grooming, the way you speak, advertising, phone manner, body language and confidence levels.
If you want to create a more favourable impression with people, then start acting as if you already are whatever it is you want to be.
If you start to walk, talk, dress, speak and act like a successful person – people will perceive you as successful and begin to treat you as you act. Perception is extremely important so don’t be afraid to project a confident self-image.
3. The Law of Focus
One of the areas most small business owners struggle with is the law of focus.
The average business owner is anything but focused; instead they are easily distracted by any number of ideas, thoughts and possibilities.
Most entrepreneurs attempt to work on many things at once, and as a result they end up doing most of them poorly, or at least not as well as they could.
This lack of focus also causes them to leap from idea to idea, trying ‘this and that’ and never staying with anything long enough to see a return.
How do you improve your degree of focus?
It starts with planning.
Most business owners have no plan.
They begin each day without a clear picture of their goal. Instead they get busy doing the low priority tasks and promise themselves that once they have completed these smaller tasks, they will be able to focus on the big picture issues.
The reality is there will always be more low priority items to distract them tomorrow.
To succeed in business, you must REGAIN YOUR FOCUS of what is most important. As Gurter wrote, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.”
A Final Word
Standing on the edge of a tall building and saying, ”I think I’ll jump because I don’t think the law of gravity applies to me” is, well, insane.
Equally crazy is to think that the laws of business don’t apply to you. They do – and if you choose to ignore them, you too may suffer a painful fall.