Marketing School: Turning Weakness Into Strength
[Note: The lovely Nataly and Lylah at Work It, Mom! interviewed me and my answers are up. You can check it out here. But you have to come back, though. That’s the rule.]
Something about your home business is weak. I know this. You know this. If it wasn’t weak, you wouldn’t be reading small business blogs on the internet. You’d be somewhere in the southern United States charging people to join your church.
Weakness is inherent. No strength exists without a corresponding weakness. The reverse is also true.
Trying to avoid weakness is like trying to avoid fear. It is an act of futility. Your job as a business owner, a freelancer, or frankly a human being is to spin your weaknesses into strengths.
The first thing to know is that not all weakness is true weakness – sometimes it’s only perceived that way. For example, in a recent post, I mentioned that you shouldn’t use inkjet printers for your business communications. While I maintain that most inkjet printers yield really crappy documents, Matt from TuleyDocs brought something to my attention:
“Can you expand on that? I have trouble telling text printed by a quality inkjet from text printed by a laser printer. And I know printing cost per page is lower with a laser than an inkjet. But inkjets have a significant advantage over laser printers: Inkjet printouts are much easier to recycle. Laser printing basically fuses the black toner to the page, which makes it a lot harder to get rid of when it’s time to recycle.
I try to run my business in an environmentally sound manner. But if my using an inkjet printer instead of a laser printer for my business communications is harming my business, then, well, I guess I have a hard decision to make.”
Concern for the environment is certainly not a weakness. You know that and I know that. However, you and I aren’t Matt’s clients. Matt’s clients are Matt’s clients, and I’ll hazard a guess that most of them didn’t read his comment. They could still be humming along, thinking that Matt’s cheaping out and using his Dad’s photo printer for his contracts.
Matt’s responsibility now is to find a way to maintain both his integrity and his professional image.
What should Matt do?
When we take a look at Matt’s specialties page, we see that his targets are largely environmentally-minded folks. This means that they will dig the fact that he’s doing cool stuff for the earth. They will not, however, dig feeling that he’s playing to their heartstrings. No big “I HEART MOTHER EARTH” signs for Matt.
Here’s what Matt should do.
In the footer of his outgoing communications – I’m talking letters, memos, promo materials, not contracts – he should include text that reads something like this:
“Did you know that documents printed on inkjet printers are 8 bazillion times easier to recycle than those printed on laser printers? Just one more thing TuleyDocs is doing to protect our environment.”
Assuming the rest of Matt’s text is black, this copy should be grey. If the rest of his text is navy, this should be a paler blue, and so on. By doing this, he accomplishes three things.
1. He gets to mention his personal ethics.
2. The use of small, light text makes his message unobtrusive – or so Matt’s customers’ think.
3. Marketing for Dropouts rule 71 says that everybody reads the P.S. immediately after reading the salutation. People always shoot to the bottom of the page. They see his message first, without even realizing they did it. They then read the remainder of his copy with an existing positive impression. To them, Matt already looks like a rockstar and they don’t even know why.
Matt gets the sale and doesn’t look like a cheap-ass.
Homework:
Figure out your business’ actual and perceived weaknesses. You don’t need to do anything with the information yet. Just let it simmer in your mind.
While you’re thinking (or rifling through your junk drawer, trying to find your business plan), subscribe to the feed. All the cool kids are doing it.
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Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own micro-business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.
Next Post: Marketing School: What The Hell Is Branding?
Great interview! I love the line about “Only follow advice from people who have the life you want”.
Hmm… really intriguing idea to turn around weaknesses…. lol, now I’m going to have trouble going to sleep. I really need to save these articles for the morning. I have trouble turning off my brain at night. (Btw, would you like us to post our homework or links to our homework here when we do them? So other people can see?)
so many weaknesses, so little time.
PEACE!
p.s. looks like i’m one of the cool kids
@ Rose - Thank you! Yes, posting your homework is a great idea. Then everyone can come to your site and see how much you rock.
@ Michael - you are SO one of the cool kids.
Nice interview. You always make me smile! I’ll be speaking to Nataly later this week about some other stuff. I was introduced to Victoria last week.
I think that focusing on your weaknesses in life is exactly what makes you a better person. If all we did was focused on our strengths then we would never improve our under-developed talents. I think life has a way of guiding us through the attention that is naturally drawn to our weaknesses. I have recently made the decision to turn my biggest weakness, my disease, into my strength by creating my blog based around the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis. The only question is if there are enough CF patients out there interested in this subject to warrant a successful site based on this idea.
To think that a few weeks ago I wasn’t even 100% clear on what a blog was. I feel like my brain has grown to 2x its original size since I’ve started reading up on this stuff. It’s funny how exhausting all of this can be on your mind!
In my quest to become a cool kid I have decided to subscribe to your feed Naomi!
p.s. she’s the one who inspired me to start my blog BTW
@ Evan - You are awesome. If I said nothing else, that would be enough. However, since I’ve never said only three words about anything in my life, I’ll continue.
Considering that 60,000 people in the world have CF and 30,000 of them are in the US, there’s 30,000 people domestically. Then, since 60% of people with CF are under eighteen, that means that each of the 18,000 American minors with CF have at least two close family members who are actively involved in their care. That means 12,000 adults with the disease and 36,000 parents. That doesn’t include medical staff, people Googling for research purposes, more distant family members, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, close friends and people with nothing better to do than sit around on StumbleUpon all day.
I’d say you have a market.
Woohoo! OK, I have my inspiration for the week.
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptThis means that they will dig the fact that he’s doing cool stuff for the earth. They will not, however, dig feeling that he’s playing to their heartstrings. No big “I HEART MOTHER EARTH” signs for Matt. Here’s what Matt should do. … [...]
Excellent. Not only did I learn something about using weaknesses as strengths but I also learned something about recycling. I need to go check that out. I may switch to using ink jet instead of laser for a lot of my printing.
Golly, thanks for the feature! The footer idea is terrific. And brain-dead easy to implement. The message is there, but it’s not hitting anyone over the head.
Thanks for the great (and free) advice on how to make a sale and not look like a cheap-ass!
@ Matt - No problem! It was a good question and something I really didn’t know anything about until you mentioned it.
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