How To Fail Despite 28 Million Customers And Invaluable Lessons You Can Learn

Honestly - If you had 28 million people walking past your business doors every year you assume that there would be a good chance of success right? Not for a (almost) client we dealt with a couple of years ago.

Over the weekend I read in the FT that its owners are floating Camden Marketing in London on the stock exchange. This is due to its huge success in attracting over 28 million visitors annually.

Just to give you some perspective here the client I am talking about that shall remain nameless needed 10 clients a day to actually make a profit and anything beyond those 10 would put her into profit. We created an incredibly basic yet effective outline plan for her company to use on the same day.

She needed just 3,650 clients a year. We needed to help her grab them from the 28 million visitors.

And another thing worth mentioning here, not only did we want to help her with her campaign but her business is smack in the middle of her perfect target market. Holistic hippies (yes like me) and the perfect targets for her service.

The strategy was old school flyers with a fusion of web marketing. It was simple, clean and clear with an acquisition offer built on the back of a break-even visit. A back-end strategy of a continuity package for the year was then sold from the first visit.

The business was a Yoga business. Maybe you don’t know but we have carved out a strong niche dealing with Yoga business over the years and some with phenomenal success like Linda’s retreats that took over $117,000 in bookings from a single webpage. I could share more but that’s for another post.

So we met the client that has 28 million walking past her very empty Yoga studio each year. When I say empty I mean most openings with just one or two students. When I say studio she had an enormous and beautiful studio right in the very heart of Camden market.

Yet what happen next didn’t in the slightest bit surprise me as I have seen this happen a million times before but first I will share with you something I see time and time again. What I am going to tell you reveals the reason for most failures.

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The client thought that having good service was enough.

The client felt that her being an expert at her job and having experts visit was enough.

The client believed that heavily investing into the décor, the equipment, and the staff the infrastructure was enough.

The client truly believed that simply opening her door in the morning with all this wonderment on show and ready to use would absolutely be enough.

Yet the one thing she had run out of cash for, never believed in and felt was wrong for the commercialization of her business was investing anything into marketing.

She knew her business was there. Her staff knew how to get to the business each day. The problem was 28 million plus had no idea her business was there. So her beautiful, bohemian, modern and fully equipped yoga studio closed its door for the last time.

Why?

She didn’t believe in marketing her business its really that simple and despite 28 million people walking past her doors each year she didn’t have the pulling power to bring in more than one or two students a day.

Why did she not hire us?

It was between us and buying more yoga mats for her failing yoga business that actually never became a real business just an exercise in ego.

So here is the most powerful lesson I have discovered in over 30 years of business and you can have this for free.

It doesn’t matter what you do with your business, what you buy, the infrastructure, the offices, the machinery, the huge amount of staff and more because if you don’t drive people into your website or brick and mortar shop you won’t survive.

Here’s what you do.

Make sure you have a budget for marketing set aside. A budget doesn’t have to be huge but it should be built into your overall goals and vision for your business.

Make sure every penny spent gives you a return on your investment. So we have a client right now that spends over £100 to acquire every client. Sounds a lot right? Every client spends over £3,500. Now does it sound a lot?

Make sure the market you create is free. Yes it’s true that spending money on marketing might sound like a cost yet the truth is good marketing should never cost you single penny when done right. Yes some campaigns can fail and do fail but you can learn from these until you get to the point that any cost is no cost as far as investment into your marketing goes.

And finally make sure you get good advice. If you don’t want to pay at least go and order some great books on Amazon that will give you some strong directions, ideas, tips and more on your marketing. Just to share with you I built my whole salon business around what I read in Jay Conrad Levison’s Guerilla marketing manual that cost me around £10. That small investment gave me a turnover of just over £3 million.

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Finally lets end with two thoughts.

The first being if you are like that yoga business person above and feel no need to take your business to the marketplace and you are struggle well my honest opinion is close the doors and go get a job, your life will instantly become more pleasurable.

The second and final thought for you is this. If you need help, advice, guidance or mentoring simply ask for help. It’s always a priority for my own clients that your marketing with myself will cost you zero despite your initial investment.

And please remember – having everything isn’t enough even giants like Apple, Microsoft, PayPal and many others still invest in weekly marketing despite their obvious success.

I can show you over 225 ways to take your business to the market fast!

I’m here to help you – just ask.

You marketing hero and man of wonderment (it’s true)

Alan Forrest Smith