7 important business rules you really don’t want to learn the hard way

Founding a business means wearing a lot of hats in those early days – one minute you’re the sales manager, the next you’re cleaning the staff toilets or replying to customers on Facebook. But as businesses scale and demands on the founder and core team increase, recognising where you can most effectively add value is a key factor for success, writes Tahnee Sharp, founder of The Marketing Room.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should (and other business rules to live by)

Many founders have learned later, rather than sooner, that just because you can do something, doesn’t always mean you should.  

Here are six more business rules to live by, to save you learning them the hard way.

 1. You can do it all, but you can’t do it all well

Hard to hear, I know, but it’s the cold, hard truth.

The quicker you can work out your strengths and weaknesses within the business, the more efficiently you can work out who or what resources you need to fill your areas of deficiency, and the quicker you’ll be on a path to growing your business.

2. Not everyone is good at marketing their own business

Some people are natural marketers, others aren’t. And that’s totally fine. If marketing isn’t an area you’re comfortable with as a business leader (and let’s be honest, marketing can be a costly minefield), then look at how you can get support and lean on those who live and breathe marketing.

So many founders and business leaders are doing it themselves without a clear strategy, when their time could be so much better spent.

3. When asked who your target market is, never say ‘everyone’

If you’re marketing your product or service to everyone, you’re effectively marketing to no one. Why? Because no one will see themselves as your customer when you promote your business, and you’ll waste a lot of marketing money.

Think instead about:

• Who would your ideal customer be?
• Who would you love to interact with?
• Who would you love to solve problems for?
• Who would you love to use your product or service?
• Who would you love to greet every day in your store?

Then this becomes who you target with your marketing. Even major retailers like Coles and Woolworths identify specific customer groups they focus on, rather than ‘everyone’.

4. You need to really understand your customers

If you aren’t making it your business to really understand your ideal customers – their motivations, their challenges, their specific qualities – then you’re going to struggle in business.

So make it your mission to build a detailed picture of your customers.

• What kind of jobs do they have?
• What’s their gender and age?
• Their life stage?
• What do they do in their spare time?
• What else is going on in their lives?
• What problem are you solving for them?

Once you’ve figured this out, you can do two things (basically Marketing 101):

1. Craft the right message
2. Put that message in the right place at the right time

5. You don’t need to hire a team

Recruiting staff is hard. Finding the right people with the right culture fit, and even knowing exactly what skill sets you’ll need, can be tough. Especially when you’re hiring for roles where you don’t have specific experience or understanding. Hiring the wrong people can turn into a major business headache.

Often in business, we think growing a team of employees is a sign of success, but actually, you can make your business more efficient by outsourcing for the skills you need. It means low risk, high return and cost savings.

For example, at The Marketing Room, we place senior marketing managers into businesses on a part-time basis. High expertise, low risk, low cost, and you get access to excellent marketing thinking and doing. Skills you might not otherwise be able to afford or access.

6. Five days a week isn’t essential

You don’t need everyone in your team to be full-time in order for your business to scale and succeed.

Having excellent people who are more senior and quicker to move, can mean things get done faster, without the overheads of full-time salaries (and super, holidays and benefits).

This is why the senior marketing managers we place are provided as part-time resources. They’re marketers with the right level of experience to work quickly and strategically, meaning you save money on full-time resources you don’t really need.

Want more? Get our newsletter delivered straight to your inbox! Follow Kochie’s Business Builders on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.