Is your business in a crowded market? What can you do to stand out in a crowded space?
First, let’s think about that statement literally. If you were at some crowded event, say a football stadium with 95,000 people, what could you do to stand out in that crowd?
Well, you could wear bright colors and paint your body. …except that half the people there probably do that too.
You could scream at the top of your lungs to try to get people in the general vicinity of your seat could all hear you. Depending on what you screamed, that might get you noticed, but it might not be the kind of attention you want. You might just be “that annoying sports fanatic guy”.
You could make some sort of gesture such as buying everyone in your section a round of beers and nachos. Even if they all accepted the gift, it’s doubtful that would really get them to notice you — it’s more likely they would notice the guys who were delivering the food.
What if you change your goal slightly from being noticed to creating influence? How would that work? You could start a wave. Regardless of the technique you use to get the wave started, it could travel around the stadium several times affecting nearly every person in the audience.
It’s not an exact analogy, but try to look at part of your job as creating influence in your market. And then direct some of that influence back to your business — not all of it. You don’t need all of it. You want to grow your entire market. If you aren’t satisfied with the size of your slice of the pie, make a bigger pie.
photo credit, aug2000_de
