Whenever you’re engaging customers on behalf of your business, whether it’s in advertisements, on your website, on social media, or in person, it’s easy to try to change who you are, to try to be what you think the customer wants. In one sense, this is a good instinct—customers won’t click on an ad or engage in a sale that they don’t think will get them something they want—but if you find yourself doing this, you may be missing a few steps, trying to skip right to the end. Yes, customers want something from you, the same way you want something from them, but it’s important to remember that you’re not just pushing a product. In any business, to some extent you’re selling yourself. In the way that you deliver your products and promote them to your customers, you’re developing a brand.

Think about it this way: if your business is as successful as you want it to be, you could be doing this for the rest of your life. Are you going to be happy if you continue to work the way you are now? If you’re trying to change yourself depending on your audience, the answer is probably no. If you think that you can’t be genuine and still make the sales that you need, think again. If customers sense that you’re being genuine with them, and that your true excellence is coming through even in your social media and advertising, they’ll respond to that. (The other side of that coin is that if you’re not being genuinely who you are with them, they’ll notice that, too.)

Keep in mind, we’re not talking about being unprofessional, or talking about your personal life on your business’s social media, and we’re not discouraging putting your best foot forward—quite the opposite, in fact. What we do at Find It Local 411 is to try to find the best parts of your work and your brand, and to promote those and help you develop them.

In running a small business, there’s a good chance that you’ve developed a relationship with some of your clients, or you may even be getting the majority of your business or referrals from only a couple of sources, depending on the business you’re in. While it can be helpful to diversify, so that you’re not entirely dependent on one or a few clients, the good news if you’re in that situation is that you’ve gained their trust. They like you. If that’s the case it can be a good idea to use that rapport to ask your clients a few simple questions about what they like about you, how you present yourself, and how you can do better. If the relationship you have with them is good enough, they might be more than happy for the opportunity to chat with you over coffee, or at the very least respond to a few questions via email.

What you can gain from this exchange is twofold: first, you can learn more about how you’re meeting your existing clients’ needs, and get some ideas about how to improve that. Second, you can benefit from your client’s perspective, which could prove to be invaluable. In business, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of believing that others perceive you the way that you perceive yourself. If you trust someone enough to ask them for an honest assessment of your business and how you’re running it, that’s an extremely valuable connection.

If you’re not sure that you have the kind of one-on-one rapport with your customers that allows you to ask those kinds of questions, a healthy (although less helpful) alternative could be to construct a questionnaire to email to your customers. You could include it in your newsletter, or put out a link to it on social media. If you’re asking people to do something for nothing, it’s also a good idea to put them into a drawing for some kind of prize if they fill out the questionnaire. (Questionnaires are easy to create using Google Docs).

At Find It Local 411, we love using all the information available to help our clients put on their best face for their clients. Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you create your next marketing campaign.

When you’re running a small business, you’ll probably want to take any client who comes in, or any opportunity to expand your operations. While it can be good to get your foot in the door in a new opportunity, it’s also important to make sure that you don’t overextend yourself into areas in which you’re not at your most effective, and making compromises which diminish your brand. What do we mean by that?

In business, your brand is who you are. It’s how other people perceive you and your work. It’s not even necessarily something that you can absolutely control, but you do have responsibility for it. If you don’t take ownership of your brand, it’s easy for it to become an accidental, clumsy identity, or worse, something that your competitors define. If you’re always working to fill gaps and doing many things, there’s a good chance that you’re not bringing your true excellence to bear in any of them. Think about how that effects your brand: you’ll become known for being not very good. Maybe adaptable, maybe affordable, but not good.

From a business standpoint, it can be very difficult to find your niche, and really focus on doing only what you’re best at, especially because running a small business always involves being able to do many things well. The trick is to make sure that all of the things you do well are done only as complements, to support what you do excellently. If you’re too busy with what you do well, or worse yet, stuck doing what you do poorly, to be able to devote your best efforts to what you do excellently, then it’s time to rethink your business model, and perhaps bring on the right personnel to compliment your strengths.

When we craft internet marketing campaigns for our clients, we always work hard to get a sense of who our clients are and what they do best. In advertising, you sometimes only get one shot at getting your potential clients’ attention. You want to make sure of two things: first, that you’re working to attract the right kind of client, who needs what you do best, and second, that you’re actually focusing your marketing those strengths.