Do The Things Your Competitors Won't

My career in marketing started in 2003 when I was a below-junior level Graphic Designer. Ever since then I have always wanted to consume as much information and learn as much as I possibly could.

As the years went on I started to follow the likes of GaryVee on YouTube and then in more recent times, James Sinclair, who is a business owner I admire greatly based in Essex.

The common theme in the messaging from these people is ‘put in the work’.

It’s obvious, but how many small business owners actually take this on board and do what’s required to grow their business?

In the home fragrance industry Tamar and I are in most of the wax melt and candle making Facebook Groups and there’s so many people who are giving up because they’re not getting the level of orders they want.

When we reach out to them and ask what’s happened and if we can offer any help we are stunned to learn that these people are not doing anything different to what they were doing 1, 2 or 3 years ago.

In difficult times, like we’re facing right now with the cost of living, and the fact that our industry is always quieter in the summer. You have to do things differently.

You can’t rely on posting a couple of times per day on Instagram and then wait for orders to come in.

Staying motivated

When you are working 18 hours per day, and seeing very little come in from your business it’s very difficult to stay motivated.

Back in 2018 when we first launched as a subscription box only, we were in this situation for 2 months. We were thinking it was a huge mistake and we should just go back to how things were.

But, we didn’t, we observed the market and listened to our customers and made significant changes by implementing an online store and running incredible deals to help grow our business.

Staying motivated all the time is hard. But, you need to work out what your motivation is. Is it to generate a full time income, supplement your existing income, employ people, grow and sell your business?

Whatever it is you need to manifest this and then work backwards from your goal to where you are now.

Let’s say you want to hit your goal in 2 years, break this down into 24 monthly goals, then break each month down into weekly goals.

When you’re chipping away each week hitting your weekly targets, it’s much easier to stay motivated knowing that you’re working towards your overall goal.

Another really simple way of staying motivated is by putting pictures of what you want to achieve in a commonly visited place in your house. So, if you want that dream house, print a picture of it and put it on the fridge!

These little things just help you to ground yourself and reminds you of why you’re working 18 hours per day.

Doing the things your competitors won’t

When Tamar and I get out of the van at 5:45am and walk to the warehouse door on a cold, wet, Tuesday morning I quite often say out loud “our competitors aren’t doing this right now”. Whether that’s true or not, it helps to give us both encouragement that we are doing more than what our competitors are doing.

Now, what’s important is to make sure that whatever you’re doing is to the benefit of the business, and ideally working ON it and not IN it. So this could be creating a marketing plan, reaching out to potential stockists, recording behind the scenes footage for vlogs… anything.

It’s easier for Tamar and I because we don’t have kids. If you do have kids and other commitments then you just need to work on a plan which means that between your other commitments you are working solidly on growing your business.

Not making sure the shelves are full of stock, but making sure you have plenty of people to buy the stock which you can make once you have an audience.

Having spent a lot of time talking with small home fragrance vendors, I can tell you for certainty that if you spent 80% of your time marketing your business and 20% of your time making products and fulfilling orders then you will outgrow so many of your competitors who have those metrics flipped the other way around.

So, to stand out in this saturated market and to grow your business you need to do the things your competitors won’t do.

Put in the work

There’s no magic formula for getting new customers and growing your business.

It just comes down to 1 thing, and it’s putting in the work.

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

What I mean by that is the process of getting customers is simple - the more people you engage with, the more adverts you run, the more emails you send…. the more customers you’ll get.

But, it’s not easy, because you need to put in the time to learn how to do those things properly to ensure your efforts are going to get you the best results.

If you can carve out enough time in the day to market your business in the best way possible then you will get more customers and grow.

Here’s something for you to do:

1. Go to 50 new profiles per day on Instagram (competitor’s followers, home accounts etc)
2. On each one of those profiles comment on 3 of their most recent posts asking them questions.
3. Follow those accounts.
4. Repeat this every day for 30 days

When you comment on 3 posts, and then follow them, that account will get 4 notifications in a row from you and therefore give you maximum exposure to that account.

See how many engaged followers you have at the end of it, how many extra visitors to your website/store you’ve had and how many extra sales this has brought in.

This does work.

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.