Opening Your Business Post-Quarantine – The Three Strategies for Doing It Successfully

To get a flood of customers, you need to have a message that connects. Learn from the story of one company that started as a basement operation and became highly successful.

It all started in 2002 for the founder of Spark Fun, Nathan Seidle. 

While studying for a degree in electrical engineering, Nathan found himself frustrated. 

The classes taught him plenty of the theory that he needed to know. But he never really got the chance to build things.

He wanted to create a device that amplified voices and would read a sensor or two. That led to him studying microcontrollers and, soon after, Spark Fun came to life.

And during the years that followed, Spark Fun grew from a basement operation and into a multi-million company. 

Of course, the great talent at the company played a huge part in this. But we believe that the company’s message is just as important.

Spark Fun specializes in creating open-source parts for people who want to get practical. The idea harkens back to Nathan’s own frustrations during his studies. He realized that there must be other inventive people like him who wanted to get practical. And now, the company capitalizes on this niche with a message specifically for those types of clients.

So…what’s your company’s message?

Your message is the biggest tool that you have for attracting new clients. If you don’t have one, or you do but it’s muddled, you’ll generate fewer leads.

And that means fewer sales for you.

It’s time to create your million-dollar message. But before we get to the three keys to do so, you need to understand first how attraction works in business.

The Five Customer Attraction Stages

Most small businesses usually find themselves in one of five stages when it comes to attracting customers.

First, I want to think of your business as a bucket that holds water.

In Stage Five, that bucket’s rusted through. It’s so full of holes that everything you pour into it just falls out of the bottom. 

It’s downright impossible to grow a business this way because you’re always putting in more than you’re getting out.

Moving on to Stage Four, you have a bucket that’s still leaky. However, it can hold a little bit of water. 

You’re attracting a few customers and may even be doing some marketing. But there are holes throughout the sides of your bucket, which means you’re missing out on tons of new customers.

Once you get to Stage Three, you’re doing a few things right. You’ve plugged most of the holes in the bucket at least. Unfortunately, you only have a trickle of water flowing into it. 

At this stage, the business stagnates because it doesn’t have a steady flow of customers.

These three are the stages you don’t want to be in.

Moving on to Stage Two, you have a solid bucket and a good flow of customers. Business starts to boom and your clients love what you’re doing. Better yet, they stick around and keep working with you over the long term.

The bucket’s pretty much full at this stage. But there’s one more stage left. And that stage is the ultimate goal for any business owner.

At Stage One, you have a flood of new leads coming in. The bucket’s no longer leaking. In fact, you’re pouring so much into it that it’s overflowing. 

This flood gives you the opportunity to work with the best clients. It also means that you always have opportunities to sell and scale.

That’s where you want to be.

So…why don’t you have a flood of customers right now?

The Reasons You Don’t Have a Flood of Customers

One of the main reasons that you don’t have a flood is that you have a low lead flow. You either don’t have enough people reaching out or you’re not doing enough to bring people in.

Often, this is the result of overly complex marketing. 

You don’t know what’s working in your strategy, so you try everything. You have ads on every possible platform, you’re doing referrals… Anything else to get customers in.

But it’s having the opposite effect.

The marketing’s so confusing that people avoid you. They’re not confident that you can help them because of your scattershot message.

And that brings us to the key issue that we’ll confront here:

Your message is too hard to follow.

People just don’t understand what you do or how you can help them.

If you want revenues to exceed expenses and have a huge flow of customers who connect to your message, you want the opposite of that. 

That’s where the million-dollar message framework comes in. 

And there are three keys that you need to master to create this message.

Key #1 – Connect with Clarity

When you’re not clear about what you do, you confuse your market.

There’s an old statement that we like to pull out here:

“A confused mind never buys.”

It’s absolutely true. If somebody doesn’t understand what you do, they’re going to shy away from you. 

That’s because they don’t trust you. 

They see this complex message of yours and assume that you’re trying to hide something from them. It’s the same reaction that people get when they watch politicians skirt around a question. They’re not getting a straight answer, so they don’t trust the person answering it.

Your goal is to become impossible to misunderstand.

You need to set out what you do, how you do it, and who you help. Be as clear as possible so that there’s no room for confusion. 

When people see your message, they’ll know whether they want what you offer or not. The people who raise their hands are likely your ideal clients because they know you provide what they want. And the people who don’t are those you’d have just wasted your time on anyway if they’d gotten in touch due to your confusing message.

Key #2 – Messaging That Lands

The key issue here is to avoid creating a generic message.

Take the Spark Fun story as an example. 

That company could have a message about how they create electrical components. It’s a clear message, but it’s also boring. There are hundreds of other companies that do the exact same thing.

Instead, they’ve positioned themselves as a company that creates open-source components. 

Now, they’re appealing to the more inventive minds out there. They’re telling their audience that they want them along for the ride. The open-source nature of their work means that anybody can contribute. 

That’s going to attract the people who have the practical mindset that Nathan had during his studies.

The goal here is to make your message unique. As well as telling people what you do, you need to tell them why what you do is so cool.

Take a few minutes to think about what separates you from your competition.

What’s the unique selling point that you can build into your messaging?

Key #3 - A Simple Marketing Solution

When you have a complex marketing strategy, you have something that’s too hard to maintain.

For example, let’s say that you’re using Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and Instagram Ads. You’re also posting content to a blog and running SEO on your website. On top of that, you have profiles on every social media channel that you’re updating regularly.

And you’re also doing traditional marketing, like flyers or even TV commercials.

Now, that may be fine for a big business that has a dedicated marketing department. But for a small business, that’s a few too many balls for you to juggle. You can’t track all of the results properly so you can’t see what’s working and what’s not. 

The end result is that you waste money on marketing that doesn’t work and you fail to scale the strategies that do work.

And when you’re in that position, it’s impossible to scale.

Worse yet, having so many marketing strategies on the go at once raises the chances of a muddled message. And you’ve got to constantly coordinate between everything.

Eventually, something will slip through the net.

Your goal is to simplify your solution. Instead of trying to do everything at once, test one of two strategies. Track the results and stick with what works. You can then scale this solution, which opens the door for growth within your business.

A Great Message = Easier Scaling

When you build complexity into your message, you create confusion in your audience. People don’t know what you do, how you do it, or why you do it. That’s why they don’t trust you and it’s why they’re not buying from you.

With the three keys we’ve shared above, you can strip away all of the complexity. And the result is a message that’s clear, unique, and simple.

That’s your million-dollar message.

All the best,

Will “At your service” Hinkson

And, whenever you’re ready... here are 4 ways I can help you grow your small business:

1. Grab a free copy of my Freeing Your Time FrameworkTM: It’s the roadmap to Increase your free time 11%-27% (while still growing your business) with this 9-minute shortcut. — Click Here

2. Join our free community on Facebook and connect with other small business owners who are scaling too. It’s where smart small business owners learn to get more income, impact, and freedom - Click Here 

3. Watch "The Small Business Success Pathway?" Training: A 14-Minute Crash Course To Add $15k A Month As A Small Business

4. Get a Scale Session: And if you ever want to get some 1:1 help, we can jump on the phone for a quick call, and brainstorm how to get you more sales, happier customers, and more freedom. - Click Here