Small Business Marketing – One Is The Loneliest Number

Not only does it make for a great song title, but it’s also a powerful business building truth that can serve you well in troubled times.  You see, most businesses mistakingly think that if they simply market their business via one method, they’ll be just fine.  WRONG!

When you’re using just one method to market your business, whatever that method might be, you’re setting yourself up for disaster.  Whether it’s online, or the yellow pages, or tele-marketing, or networking, or even encouraging your customers to provide referrals, by employing just one method of generating new business you put your business at risk if anything were to happen to that one stream.

Picture a bath tub for just a moment.  While you may have a powerful stream of water filling up the tub, you also have the drain that’s letting some of that water escape.  Now, for the time being the stream might be filling the tub faster than the drain allows the water to escape.  But what happens if the stream get’s turned off for any reason at all?  Sure, your tub will have water for a little while, but eventually it’s going to be empty.

Now, what do you think would happen if instead of just one stream filling your tub with water, you had multiple streams of water filling your tub?  So instead of just relying on the yellow pages for new business, you also had systems in the local newspaper, or on the Internet, or relationships with other businesses, or your networking activities, or any other method of marketing your business you can think of?

This time when the main stream gets shut off, your tub won’t end up empty because you have all these other sources of customers keeping it filled.

It’s the same idea with your business.  When you rely on just one source of generating new customers, you put your business at risk.  So, look to employ AS MANY marketing methods as you profitably can so that when the day does come that you lose one of your streams, you’ll still be able to grow you business at a healthy rate.