Over the past year, my son and I have been taking guitar lessons. It’s been a great deal of fun, and at my age, it’s been a tough road. My brain isn’t quite as nimble as my son’s (who is only 11), and I have a lot of things I have to un-learn before I can progress.
I was thinking about some marketing ideas and tasks the other day while practicing my guitar, and I realized there’s a lot of similarities between the marketing for a local business and learning to play the guitar. Here’s what I discovered:
- The fundamentals are essential: With guitar, there are a number of fundamentals to learn as you progress. The different pieces of the guitar, each string, the notes as you go up and down the frets, and chords. Without learning these fundamentals, you’ll never progress to playing songs. With marketing, you need to learn the fundamentals of turning the features of your products or services into benefits, who your ideal customer is, and proper positioning and branding. If you can clearly articulate who you are, what you do, and who will most benefit from your product or service, you have the fundamentals of marketing your local business.
- Practice, practice, practice: My guitar instructor can always tell when I haven’t been practicing – I just haven’t progressed during the week. So I end up wasting time getting back up to speed instead of learning new techniques. Good marketing requires practice as well. When you consistently write about your company, and do the things that need to be done on a daily or weekly basis – blog posts, press releases, responding to customer inquiries and complaints (and yes, I believe Customer Service is part of marketing) – then you’ll get better at honing your message and getting your point across to customers and prospects.
- A song is made up of notes and chords: When you play songs, you have to add a lot of elements to the mix – notes, chords, proper timing, lyrics, etc. Your marketing needs to contain a mix of different elements to really “sing” (and I apologize for the wordplay – it was just too easy!). Good copywriting forms the foundation of all your marketing, and to properly market your company, you need great website content, blog posts, public relations, signage, sales presentations, and events marketing. All of these elements work together to push prospects along to customers and customers along to evangelists for your business.
- You need to tune your instrument: As you play your guitar, it will eventually come out of tune, so you need to tune it back up. You also need to re-check your marketing efforts to make sure you stay in tune. Track your marketing campaigns and react to which things work and fix those that don’t. Much like playing a guitar, there’s no fast rules in marketing that will work across every industry and with every demographic. If you want your business marketing to succeed, you have to be ready to fine tune and continually watch your progress.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions: Because the guitar is such a difficult instrument to learn (at least for me), I’m sometimes a little confused about a certain technique or music theory. Instead of struggling along and trying not to look stupid, I always ask questions. You probably didn’t get into your business to become a marketer. Instead, you’re doing something you love or were trained to do, and you didn’t receive a lot of marketing instruction. Today, there are tons of resources available for small businesses to help with their marketing questions (including this blog). There are no dumb questions, and it’s certainly not smart to struggle when there are so many helpful resources online.
One final note (I just couldn’t resist)… Guitar is something that I understand will take me a while to become competent, let alone master. And I may never get to the point of mastery. But, I’m going to keep at it because it’s interesting, and I truly believe it will help me in other areas of my life, including persistence and keeping my brain nimble.
You’re not going to be a marketing expert on day one, or even day 360. It’s an ongoing process, and with the increased pace of change today, there’s always something new to learn in your marketing journey. Just keep an open mind and a sense of humor, as well as a lot of persistence, and you’ll see results for your business.
Good luck!
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